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8  ci  6"  'T  -7 


Sc 

v-      i 


SLAVERY  IN  THE  SOUTH: 


A  REVIEW  OF  HAMMOND1S  AND  FULLER'S   LETTERS, 


AND 


CHANCELLOR  HARPER'S  MEMOIR  ON  THAT  SUBJECT, 

From  the  Oct.  No.  (1845)  of  the  Southern  Quarterly. 


AMONG  the  popular  school  books,  some  forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  was  a  plain  prose 
edition  of  Esop's  fables.  The  stories,  told  in  the  simplest  possible  language,  were 
illustrated  with  wood  cuts,  very  coarse  it  is  true,  but  sufficiently  expressive.  One  of 
these  represented  a  naked  blackamoor  standing  in  a  tub  of  water.  Around  him  is 
assembled  a  group  of  women — busy  bodies  in  matters  not  their  own—matrons  not 
over  attentive  to  their  own  households — widows  seeking  somebody  to  care  about — 
spinsters  anxious  for  notoriety,  and  not  scrupulous  about  the  means  for  obtaining  it. 
With  much  clamor  and  gossip,  and  infinite  zeal,  they  are  employed;  some  of  them  in 
throwing  water  on  the  black;  some  in  scrubbing  him  with  mops  and  brushes;  and  the 
rest  in  encouraging  and  directing  the  efforts  of  their  companions.  The  labor  of  love  was 
intended  to  wash  the  blackamoor  white;  it  ended,  as  Esop  tells  us,  in  the  death  of  the 
favored  party.  During  the  progress  of  the  experiment,  the  ladies,  no  doubt,  discussed 
the  certainty  of  its  success;  the  benevolence  of  their  own  motives;  the  folly  and  ma- 
lice of  those,  who  refused  to  believe  that  black  could  be  made  white;  and  the 
advantages  of  amalgamation  with  the  interesting  patient,  when  the  process  of  regen- 
eration should  be  over. 

Esop's  benevolent  women  were  the  prototypes  of  the  present  abolitionists,  or  ablu- 
lionists.  These  also  are  busy  with  their  tub  and  blackamoor.  Mr.  Jay  plies  his  mop, 
and  Tappan  his  bucket,  and  John  Quincy  Adams  his  newly  invented  scrubbing  brush — 
the  right  of  petition — with  exemplary  vigor,  whilst  Alvan  Stewart,  and  Casssus  M. 
Clay,  stand  by  in  delirious  ecstacy,  and  the  Trollopes,  Martineaus,  and  Abby  Kellys, 
with  all  the  abolition  matrons  and  maidens  of  blushing  New-England,  are  earnest 
and  eloquent  on  the  necessity  and  benefits  of  immediate  amalgamation.  The  zeal 
of  these  modern  transmuters  of  races  and  colors,  is  not  only  as  warm  and  clamoroui 
as  that  of  their  predecessors,  but  promises  the  same  result  to  the  object  of  their 
affection. 

If  the  operators  could  confine  their  experiment  to  subjects  among  themselves,  the 
Southern  people  would  neither  complain  nor  interfere.  We  should  feel  some  sym- 
pathy for  the  poor  black,  and  some  wonder  at  the  crazy  white,  but  there  is  no  Paul- 
Pryism  in  the  character  of  the  South,  and  we  would  leave  our  neighbors  of  old,  or 
New-England,  to  conduct  their  own  affairs  in  their  own  way.  Indeed  we  are  §o  far 
acquainted  with  the  ethics  of  fanaticism,  and  have  so  much  charity  for  folly,  as  to  be 
willing  to  excuse  the  abolitionists,  if  they  should  occasionally  steal  from  the  Southern 
States  a  negro  or  two  for  their  experiments,  as  they  often  do,  when  their  prisons  and 
penitentiaries  have  absorbed  their  own — it  would  be  unreasonable  to  require  that  a 
fanatic  should  be  able  to  respect  the  rights  of  property,  or  that  a  party  should  ac- 
knowledge the  obligations  imposed  by  the  decalogue,  who  virtually  reject  the  author- 
ity of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments. 


Slavery  in  the  South. 

But  these  good  people  are  not  content  to  indulge  their  whims  within  their  own 
limits,  or,  to  anv  moderate  extent,  at  our  expense.  They  have  a  perfect  m  nia  for 
th«>  tub  and  scrubbing  brush,  arrl  cannot  be  satisfied  without  thrusting  them  into  the 
Southern  States,  and  experimenting  among  us  upon  our  slaves.  We  have,  therefore, 
been  compelled,  from  time  to  time,  to  tell  them,  in  very  plain  terms,  that  we  have  no 
faith  in  their  wisdom  or  th^ir  motives;  that  their  pi^sion  for  intermeddling  in*  what 
dors  not  concern  them,  has  nothing  in  common  with  the  pure  and  noble  sentiment 
of  Christian  benevolence,  which  is  incompatible  with  any  thing  ma'evolent  or  vindic- 
tive; that  it  is  in  truth  the  offspring  of  inordinate  vanity,  the  love  of  excitement,  or 
the  bastard  ambition,  which  seeks  power  by  other  than  the  ordinary  and  legitimate 
modes  When,  in  the  pursuit  of  their  object,  they  send  agents  among  us  to  amend 
our  laws,  we  dismiss  them  with  as  much  eivility  as  the  case  permits.  When  they 
abuse  the  common  council  room  of  the  nation  to  annoy  the  South,  we  are  constrained 
to  let  them  know  that  their  agitation  in  Congress  is  a  faithless  violation  of  ri^nts 
guaranteed  by  the  Constitution,  and  which  honest  and  honorable  men  could  not  fail 
to  respect — very  moderate  language,  and  altogether  short  of  a  just  'description  of  that 
arrogant  and  insolent  surveillance  over  the  social  condition  of  the.  Southern  States, 
established  and  kept  up  by  societies  and  associations  at  the  North,  under  the  pitiful 
pretence  of  a  right  to  discuss,  or  a  right  to  petition,  or  benevolence,  or  religion,  or 
some  other  glossing  falsehood. 

But  the  people  of  the  Southern  States  have  never  formally  vindicated,  until  lately, 
the  rightfulness,  advantages,  and  necessity  of  slavery,  as  established  among  us.  Some 
have  thought  it  idle  to  reason  with  fanatics,  and  others  have  been  averse  to  the  ex- 
citement to  which  such  a  discussion  might  possibly  lead,  or,  perhaps,  they  have  dis- 
trusted  the  strength  of  their  own  position;  whatever  the  reason  may  have  been,  they 
have  abstained  from  any  discussion  of  the  subject  when  it  was  possible  to  avoid  it. 
But  a  change  is  perceptible  in  the  Southern  States.  The  perpetual  din  of  the  North- 
ern and  European  press,  has  roused  the  attention  of  our  people.  It  is  proper  that  it 
should  do  so.  Continued  attacks  unmet,  arguments  unanswered,  misrepresentation 
unexplained,  and  falsehoods  unbranded,  may  produce  evil  consequences  even  among 
O'irselves.  It  is  due,  therefore,  even  to  our  own  people,  to  look  the  subject  fairly  in 
the  face,  to  lay  aside  all  scruple,  and  to  challenge  investigation.  It  is  due  also  to 
those  of  the  Northern  States — composing  by  far  the  greater  number  of  their  people — 
who  are  not  abolitionists,  and  who  need  information  on  a  subject  of  which  they  have 
no  personal  knowledge.  The  pamphlets  at  the  head  of  our  article,  will  show  that 
certain  distinguished  and  able  men  at  the  South  have  come  to  this  conclusion;  the 
execution  of  them  proves  that  it  has  been  from  no  lack  of  logic  or  wit,  that  the  amis 
des  noirs  had  so  long  remained  unanswered. 

The  South  is  indebted,  we  believe,  to  Professor  Dew,  for  the  first  clear  and  com- 
prehensive argument  on  the  subject  of  slavery.  In  a  review  of  the  debates  in 
ihe  Virginia  Convention,  he  has  produced  an  argument  on  the  subject, 
which  a  distinguished  judge  pronounces  to  be  the  most  able  and  philosophic  that  he 
has  mpt  with  in  our  time.  He  was  followed  by  Chancellor  Harper,  who,  in  the 
year  183(5,  delivered  an  oration,  and  in  1837,  read  a  memoir  on  the  same  subject, 
before  the  Literary  and  Philosophical  Society  of  South-Carolina.  He  takes'  the 
broad  ground  that  slavery  cannot  be  proven  to  be  a  moral,  political,  or  social  evil,  or 

o  be  incompatible  with  a  well  regulated  and  happy  civil  polity.     To  those  who  have 
the  happiness  to  know  Chancellor  Harper;  the  purity   of  his'life;   ihe  fairness  of  his 

[fund;  the  simplicity  of  his  character;   his  love  for  truth;   his  devotion  to  knowledge; 

tn»  exactness  of  h.s  taste;  and  the  force  and  compass  of  his  intellect;   it  need  hardly 

said,  that  whatever  he  writes  is  worthy  of  serious  attention,  not  only  for  the  abiii- 

it  must  exhibit,  but  because  it  comes  from  a  man  of  wisdom  and  virtue   the 

is  of  whose  life   is  the  conscientious    and  earnest  seeking  after  truth.     The 

Chancellor  has  been  followed  by  Dr.  Cartwright,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Fuller,  and  Governor 

iammond,  who  have  discussed  the  subject,  in  its  several  relations,  with  great  ability.* 
.rtwnght  s  article,  in  a  former  number  of  this  review,  is  exceedingly  iWoi- 


§••  aUo  an  able  argument  in  the  3d  No.  of  the  Southern  Review. 


Slavery  in  the  /South.  g 

ous  and  interesting,  and  well  deserves  a  careful  perusaL  Governor  Hammond's  let- 
ters are  in  every  body's  hands,  they  have  been  published  in  various  forms,  and  a  large 
number  of  the  pamphlet  edition  has  been  sent  to  England  for  circulation.  They  are 
written  in  that  discursive  but  p  >pular  form,  with  intermingled  logic,  wit,  and  sarcasm, 
which  commands  the  public  lavor,  and  gives  them  the  best  possible  quality  for  a 
book,  that  of  being,  like  Randolph's  speeches,  readable  by  every  body.  We  shall 
attempt  to  give  a  concise  summary  of  the  arguments  of  some  of  these  gentlemen. 

The  first  topic  that  meets  us,  in  their  discussion  of  the  question  of  slavery,  is  a  sort 
of  argumetifum  ad  hominem,  as  far  as  England  and  the  North  are  concerned.  The 
impugners  of  slavery  and  slaveholders  in  America,  are  the  very  people  by  whom 
slaves  and  slaveholders  were  established  there.  The  capital  which,  in  New-England, 
is  now  invested  in  presses  and  print  shops  for  the  slander  of  the  slaveholder;  for  en- 
tictng  negroes  to  fly  from  their  masters;  for  cramming  runaway  negro  orators  to  rival 
Birney  and  Tappan;  for  paying  small  traffickers  in  philanthropy  to  sneak  into  South- 
ern  families,  arid  chronicle  lies  in  the  intervals  of  fawning  and  feeding,  was  invested 
a  few  years  ago  in  transporting  negroes  from  Africa.*  Being  compelled  by  law  to 
abandon  the  old  trade  of  making  the  black  a  slave,  the  business  men  have  taken  up 
tjie  new  one  of  making  him  free.  If  the  law  permitted  a  return  to  the  former  traffic, 
(here  is  no  doubt  that  both  branches  of  the  concern  would  be  carried  on  with  equal 
activity.  Even  now,  the  law  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  according  to  ther 
report  of  an  American  officer  on  the  African  station,  Northern  merchants  furnish 
vessels  and  merchandize  to  the  slavers  on  the  coast  of  Africa,  and  in  this  manner 
faciliate  the  trade  in  slaves.  But  this,  by  no  means,  conflicts  with  the  abolitionists' 
carrying  on  the  trade  of  emancipation.  It  is  quite  possible,  indeed,  that  the  same 
parties  may  be  active  in  both  departments,  and  that  Mr.  Tuppan  may  do  a  turn  of 
business  in  making  bond,  as  well  as  making  free.  It  is  of  little  moment  to  these 
reviiers  of  their  own  countrymen,  that  all  such  libellers  as  they  are,  belong  to  the 
proverbially  respectable  order  of  evil  birds  who  befoul  their  own  nests.  To  the 
hunter  after  notoriety,  or  money,  the  cleanliness  of  the  field  is  of  small  importance, 
or  consideration.  He  is  like  the  Roman  emperor,  who  could  find  no  unsavourry 
smell  in  the  gold  derived  from  the  filthiest  object  of  taxation. 

To  this  argumeritum  ad  hominen  the  people  of  England  are  even  more  exposed, 
than  our  own  countrymen.  If  individuals  and  nations  are  responsible,  for  the  neces- 
sary consequences  of  their  acts,  then  is  England  responsible  for  slavery  in  the  United 
States,  For  more  than  a  century,  the  English  merchants  carried  on  in  this  country, 
an  extensive  commerce  in  negro  slaves.  They  bought  them  in  Africa,  transported 
them  to  America,  and  sold  them  to  the  planters,  for  large  sums  of  money.  Now  a 
new  fashion  prevails,  and  the  good  people  of  England  form  societies,  establish 
presses,  and  circulate  books,  pamphlets,  and  tracts,  to  revile  the  planters  for  holding 
the  very  slaves,  which  English  capital,  English  ships,  and  English  merchants  pur- 
chased, transported,  and  sold  among  them.  Into  this  new  current  of  national  opinion 
all  classes  have  fallen;  from  the  Irish  demagogue,  to  the  English  Duke;  from  Mrs. 
Marhneau,  to  the  Scotch  ex-Chancellor;  from  Dickens — the  incarnation  of  Cockney 
sentiment — to  the  Queen's  consort,  who  spares  an  hour,  occasionally,  from  nursing 
the  numerous  buds  of  the  illustrious  white  and  red  rose  of  York  and  Lancaster,  to  ex- 
tend his  care  to  the  negro  across  the  Atlantic.  In  this  war  upon  a  system  of  their 
own  making,  the  English  people  as  is  common  wi;h  them,  have  no  selfish  design 
whatever — no  intermeddling  disposition  to  supervise  the  concerns  of  America,f  Cuba, 
or  Brazil.  They  do  not  make  it  a  pretext  for  overhauling  the  vessels  of  other  nations, 
and  promoting  their  claim  to  supremacy  on  the  ocean.  They  cover  under  it  no  sly 

*  Even  the  clergy  took  part  in  the  slave  trade  speculation.     Or.  Stiles  sent  a  barrel  of  rum  to 
Africa  to  purchase  a  negro;  and,  in  due  time,  as  Dr.  Wayland  tells  us,  the  Reverend  trader  receiv- 
ed a  well-conditioned  negro  boy. 

*  We  say  America  for  trn  United  States.     It  is  the  proper  name  of  the  United  States.     In  Eu- 
rope, by  America,  they  mean  the  United  Stales :    by  Americans,   they  mean  the  citizens  oi   the 
United  States.     Other  parts  of  the  continent  have  different  names  :  Mexico,  Brazii.  Chili.     Amer- 
ica is  appropriated  by  us.     To  attempt  to  substitute  for  it   Alleghauia,  etc.,  is  both 

and  ridiculous. 


in  the  South. 

'scheme  for  rebuilding  their  colonial  prosperity,  and  correcting  the  blunders  of  their 
West  India  policy,  by  checking,  in  other  countries,  the  growth  of  those  productions 
which  she  has  virtually  abandoned,  by  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  her  own  Nothiwg 

]jkeit they  are  actuated  by  the  purest  benevohnce  only — their  captains  of  slavers 

have  all  been  converted  into  Howards,  and  have  exchanged  their   zeal  for  making 
slaves,  into  an  equal  zeal  for  making  freemen. 

From  their  anxiety  to  take  care  of  the  poor  ot  other  nations,  it  might  be  naturally 
inferred  that  they  have  none  at  home — no  rags,  no  wretchedness  unequalled  in  any 
other  country;  no  filthy  hovels  with  mud  floors,  the  common  abode  of  pigs,  poultry, 
and  peasant;  no  crowded  cellars,  where  families  occupy  each  its  corner;  no  millions 
of  paupers  never  fed,  never  clothed,  never  warmed  in  winter;  no  children  put  to  hard 
labor  below  ground;  no  girls  at  work  among  naked  men;  no  examples  of  human  de- 
gradation and  suffering  more  brutal  than  any  American  imagination,  unassisted  by 
British  Parliamentary  Reports,  could  possibly  conceive.  Nothing  of  all  this  can  ex- 
ist  in  England.  The  Parliamentary  Reports  must  be  false.  If  true,  would  riot 
English  hearts  and  hands  be  first  and  exclusively  devoted  to  extirpate  so  horrible  a 
condition  of  society? — would  they  write,  declaim,  expend  thousands  on  a  supposed 
abuse  three  thousand  miles  off,  with  which  they  have  no  connection,  civil,  social,  or 
political,  and  of  which  they  know  little  or  nothing,  whilst  the  horrors  of  their  own 
hearths  continue  to  cry  to  heaven  for  redress?  Would  they  pass  by  their  fellow-sub- 
jects dying  of  hunger  on  their  very  door  sills,  to  make  long  prayers  in  the  market 
place  for  the  sufferin  s  of  the  negro,  who  never  knows  what  hunger  is. 

But  if  British  philanthropy  is  resolved  to  look  over  and  beyond  their  own  homeless, 
unfed,  ragged  millions,  and  expend  its  unsought  sympathy  on  other  nations,  it  is  sug- 
gested to  Mr.  Clarkson,  with  all  due  respect,  to  pursue  the  only  course  by  which  his 
end  can  be  accomplished.  His  countrymen  brought  the  negro  here,  let  them  take 
him  away.  They  are  in  possession  of  the  millions  for  which  they  sold  him,  let  them 
use  the  money  to .buy  them.  They  may  purchase  asany  body  else  may  purchase. 
Thej  may  carry  their  property  where  they  please,  as  other  owners  do.  But  they 
have  never  done  this.  They  have  never  released  from  slavery  a  single  slave,  by  the 
only  possible  mode  by  which  they  can  release  him.  It  is  far  more  agreeable  to  the 
system  by  which  they  combine  the  pleasures  of  charity  and  gain,  to  hold  great  meet- 
ings at  Exeter  Hall;  to  boast  of  English  philanthropy  and  liberty;  to  issue  circulars 
full  of  self-complacency  and  self-gratulation,  thanking  that  they  are  not  as  other  men 
— slave-holders,  and  man-stealers — and  to  continue,  with  their  hands  in  their  breeches 
pockets,  to  jingle  the  very  gold  for  which  they  sold  the  African  savage,  kidnapped  by 
their  ship-masters  on  the  coast  of  Guinea.  This  negro  trade  has  been  invaluable  to 
our  English  friends.  It  first  filled  their  purses  with  an  immense  amount  of  money, 
and  now  it  affords  a  capital,  on  which  their  traders  in  philanthrophy,  as  Coleridge 
calls  them,  carry  on  a  large  and  profitable  business.  Being  no  longer  able  to  coin 
money  out  of  slavery,  they  now  turn  it  to  another  account,  and  make  it  a  reputation- 
for-humanity  fund.  They  manage  to  earn  a  character  for  hating  slavery  out  of  the 
very  plantations  in  America,  which  they  themselves  stocked  with  slaves.  They 
contrive,  from  the  same  quarter,  at  the  same  time,  to  obtain  credit  for  benevolence, 
and  cotton  for  their  Manchester  trade.  They  are  like  their  Bishop  of  London,  who 
declaims,  before  the  House  of  Lords,  on  the  debaucheries  of  the  age,  and  rents  out  the 
very  stews  in  which  they  flourish;  securing  a  subject  for  his  moral  lecture  on  licen- 
tiousness, by  providing  tenements  for  those  who  indulge  in  it.  They  resemble  their 
own  beau  ideal  of  a  fine  gentleman — George  the  IV. — who  drove  his  wife  into  im- 
prudencies  by  his  brutality  and  neglect,  and  persecuted  her  to  death  for  having  fallen 
into  them; — or,  one  of  the  fashionable  Whartons  of  the  London  Clubs,  who  seduces  a 
woman,  and  then  upbraids  her  with  a  want  of  virtue.  The  case  is  even  worse,  as 
violation  is  worse  than  seduction,  for  John  Bull  forced  the  colonies  to  do,  what  he  now 
abuses  them  for  having  done. 

This  knack  in  our  old  friend,  of  reconciling  the  propensities  first  for  getting  money, 
and  next  for  making  rhetorical  flourishes  about  his  benevolence,  is  not  confined  to 
American  slavery.  It  is  quite  as  conspicuous,  and  amusing  in  other  matters — for 
example,  in  his  East  India  affaire. 


Slavery  in  the  South.  5 

For  many  years  the  gold  and  jewels  of  Hindostan  continued  to  flow  into  England 
without  interruption  During  half  a  century,  not  a  ship  arrived  from  Calcutta,  which 
did  not  bring  with  it  some  nabob  returning  with  his  chests  of  gold  and  diamonds,  the 
plundered  treasure  of  Begums  and  Rajahs,  hoarded  from  generation  to  generation, 
for  centuries.  When  Clive  was  accused  of  rapacity,  he  burst  into  an  exclamation, 
that  so  far  from  being  guilty,  he  looked  back  with  astonishment  at  his  own  moderation 
when  he  remembered  how  he  walked  in  the  treasury  of  Moorshedabad,  between 
heaps  of  gold  and  precious  stones,  his  will  being  the  only  limit  to  his  power.  Clive 
had  few  equals.  There  were  not  many  of  the  Company's  servants  who  left  them- 
selves, under  similar  circumstances,  the  same  cause  for  astonishment.  Pennyless  wri- 
ters who  went  to  India  with  small  salaries,  in  a  few  years  returned,  to  buy  manors,  sur- 
pass the  aristocracy  in  profusion  and  ostentation,  and  rival  princes  in  their  expenditure. 

But  whilst  the  whole  nation  were  eagerly  rushing  to  this  harvest  of ''barbaric  pearl 
and  gold,"  they  got  up,  to  balance  the  account,  the  most  magnificent  indignation- 
meeting  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  Hastings,  the  Governor-General  of  India, 
was  arraigned  in  Westminster  Hall.  Ladies,  and  Lords,  and  Commons — all  that 
England  possessed  of  beauty,  and  talent,  and  notye  birth — were  assembled,  day  after 
day,  lo  hear  the  denunciations  of  an  eloquence  never  surpassed,  perhaps  never 
equalled — to  listen,  with  wonder,  to  the  vehement  logic  of  Fox,  the  sparkling  decla- 
mation of  Sheridan,  the  gorgeous  imagination  of  Burke,  luxuriating  in  kindred  themes 
of  Eastern  character  and  scenery.  The  effect  on  the  female  audience  was  terrific — 
one  lainted,  another  was  carried  out  in  hysterics.  But  time  passed  on;  the  ladies 
became  weary,  or  found  something  more  attractive  in  the  opera,  or  the  play;  the 
counsel  flagged;  every  thing  grew  tired  but  the  hatred  of  Francis,  and  the  ardour  of 
Burke;  the  trial  closed,  and  the  enemy  of  Cheyte  Sing  and  Nuncomar  retired  from 
the  bar  of  the  Senate  to  purchase  an  estate,  and  enjoy  a  pension.  We  are  not  to 
suppose  that,  during  all  this  time,  there  was  one  rupee  less  taken  from  the  plundered 
Indian.  The  grand-national-sympathy-meeting  vindicated  the  British  character  for 
humanity,  and  the  Company's  servants  took  care  to  gratify  the  national  passion  for 
wealth.  One  incident  occurred,  during  the  grand  exhibition  of  benevolence  and 
justice  by  the  British  Parliament,  which  sufficiently  explains  the  nature  of  the  show. 
Mr.  Martin,  au  honest  country  member,  very  deeply  affected  by  the  eloquent  account 
of  the  wrongs  done  to  the  Indian  Princesses,  got  up  and  declared,  in  his  simplicity, 
that  if  any  member  would  move  to  restore  the  treasures  of  which  the  Princesses  had 
been  plundered,  he  would  second  the  motion.  He  looked  round  for  support;  but 
not  a  voice  was  heard;  not  a  man  was  found  to  make  the  motion,  and  the  honest 
countryman  discovered;  that  restoration  of  the  stolen  property  was  not  the  policy  of 
the  receivers  of  stolen  goods,  however  eloquent  they  may  be  in  denouncing  the 
thief. 

The  East  India  company  have  shown  a  very  happy  conformity  to  the  national 
character,  in  their  transactions  of  commerce  and  conquest,  "always,"  says  a  distin- 
guished English  writer,  "protesting  against  adding  a  foot  to  their  territory,  and  de- 
nouncing the  policy  which  extended  it,  while  they  quietly  take  possession,  without  a 
•murmur,  of  the  gains  thus  acquired;  at,  once  relieving  their  conscience  by  the  protest, 
and  replenishing  their  purses  by  the  spoil."* 

The  war  in  China  furnishes  another  happy  exemplification  of  the  manner  in  which 
the  British  combine  the  love  of  gain,  and  a  benevolent  regard  to  the  happiness  of 
their  neighbors.  They  waged  war  on  the  poor  Celestials,  battered  down  their  forts, 
stormed  their  towns,  butchered  the  almost  unresisting  people  like  sheep,  not  for 
conquest,  or  commerce  only,  but  for  the  advancement  of  the  Christian  religion,  and 
the  amelioration  of  the  Chinese  moral  and  religious  character.  They  fought  at 
once  for  the  extension  of  trade,  and  of  true  religion,  and  made  converts  with  the 
same  zeal  to  the  use  of  Opium,  and  the  New  Testament. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  business  part  of  the  transaction  was  a  fair  one, 
because  it  has  been  jusiified  by  the  casuist  of  Quincy,  who  thinks  it  horrible  to  whip 
a  delinquent  negro  with  a  lash,  but  very  commendable  to  poison  the  Chinese  with 


6  Slavery  in  the  South. 

opium.  The  Hong  Kong  Gazette  announces  that  the  trade  has  fully  succeeded;  that 
opium  is  now  eaten  by  the  Celestials  without  opposition,  or  enquiry,  on  the  part  ot 
their  government;  and  the  London  papers  announce  the  arrival  of  the  last  two  mil- 
hons  of  syeee  silver.  Whether  the  philanthropic  part  of  the  undertaking  is  equally 
successful,  we  are  not  yet  informed. 

This  amiable  and  benevolent  desire  to  promote  the  happiness  of  the  whole  human 
race,  so  conspicuously  exhibited  in  the  censure  of  slavery,  the  conquest  of  India,  and 
the  improvement  of  China,  has  alone  induced  th«*  people  of  England  to  appropriate 
to  themselves  endless  possessions  in  all  parts  of  the  globe.  In  addition  to  India,  with 
its  hundred  millions,  they  possess  New-Holland,  and  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and 
Gibralter,  and  Canada,  and  parts  of  South  America  and  Africa,  and  countless  islands 
in  every  orean  and  sea.  This  certainly,  to  a  careless  observer,  seems  to  indicate  a 
grasping  and  greedy  spirit  in  the  English  people,  but  then,  per  contra,  to  demonstrate 
their  moderation,  they  show  a  most  laudable  zeal  for  the  independence  of  Texas,  and 
denounce  the  rapacity  of  the  United  States  in  seeking,  or  desiring  its  annexation. 
They  exhibit  an  equal  zeal  to  save  Oregon  from  the  ambition  of  America,  and  are 
even  willing  to  take  it  themselves^worthless  as  they  say  the  country  is,  rather  than 
see  it  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  unprincipled  republicans.  In  this  way  England  recon- 
ciles, to  her  own  satisfaction,  the  passion  for  acquisition,  and  the  profession  of  moder- 
ation, and  is  at  once  most  insatiable  in  her  own  acquisitions,  and  most  censorious  on 
those  of  other  nations.  One  of  her  writers  is  now  recommending  the  seizure  of 
Egypt.  If  she  takes  it,  the  occupation  will  be  accompanied  with  endless  declarations, 
that  it  is  intended  for  the  benefit  of  the  world  in  general,  and  for  the  religious,  moral, 
and  civil  improvement  of  the  Egyptians  in  particular,  and  for  no  other  purpose.  We 
are  told  of  a  Benedictine  who  boasted  or  confessed,  that  his  vow  of  poverty  had  se- 
cured to  him  an  income  ot  100,000  crowns,  his  vow  of  humility  had  clothed  him  with 
princely  dignities,  and  his  vow  of  chastity  had  produced  effects  equally  surprising  and 
agreeable.  The  English  professions  of  generosity,  magnanimity,  and  moderation, 
have  led  to  consequences  quite  as  singular,  unexpected,  and  edifying. 

WP  have  been  puzzled  to  understand  how  it  is.  .that  England  should  be  not  only 
blameless,  but  praiseworthy,  in  seizing  upon  India  with  one  hundred  millions  of  in- 
habitants, and  that  America  should  be  unprincipled  and  ambitious,  in  adding  certain 
vacant  territory  to  her  possessions,  The  fact  must  be  so,  for  all  England  affirms  it 
to  be  so.  It  is  perhaps  the  only  point  on  which  the  English  and  Irish  agree,  and 
about  which  Mr.  O'Connell  does  not  pronounce  the  Premier  a  dealer  in  falsehoods. 
It  is  true,  that  there  are  some  differences  in  our  proceedings  and  theirs.  We  appro- 
priate  a  country  by  purchase,  they  by  conquest;  we  with  the  consent  of  the  inhabi- 
tants, they  without  it;  we  deal  in  resolutions,  conventions, constitutions,  they  in  flying 
artillery,  and  sharp  pointed  bayonets;  we  annex  a  few  thousand  new  citizens,  and 
many  acres  of  revenueless  conntry,  they  millions  of  new  subjects,  and  countless  laes 
of  contributions.  It  must  be  these  differences  that  make  the  objection  to  us.  Our 
mode  of  acquisition  is  not  that  which  is  recognized  in  monarchical  and  aristocratic 
Europe,  and,  therefore,  not  the  legitimate  mode.  We  presume  to  differ  with  Kiri«rs 
in  obtaining  increase  of  territory  by  peaceable  means,  and  not  by  glorious  war,  and 
are  therefore  unprincipled  republicans— uninstructed  in  the  true  royal  doctrines,  which 
direet  acqujsitions  ot  territory  to  be  made  by  violence  only,  and  justify  such  acts -ven 
as  the  attack  on  Denmark,  provided  it  be  attended  with  a  sufficient  destruction  of 
human  life.  Tested  by  these  royal  maxims,  the  annexation  of  Ireland  was 
originally  a  wise  and  just  measure,  and  ought  to  be  adhered  to,  because  it  was  ac- 
complished in  spite  of  the  Irish,  and  with  an  abundant  shedding  of  Irish  blood-  but 
the  annexation  of  Texas  is  an  act  of  unprincipled  ambition  and  rapacity,  because  it 
was  done  with  the  consent  of  every  Texan  man,  woman,  and  child—an  independent 
people  by  the  admission  and  recognition  of  England  and  Fraace.  It  arises,  no  doubt, 
trom  this  .egitimaie  mode  of  annexation  applied  by  England  to  Ireland,  that  there 
exists  between  the  two  countries  a  love  and  esteem  so  cordial,  as  to  excite  universal 
admiration.  No  two  nations  in  the  world,  neither  Italians  and  Germans,  nor  Turks 
and  Greeks,  nor  Russians  and  Poles— another  example  of  the  royal  mode  of  annexa- 
tion—teei  for  each  other  so  much  affectionate  solicitude,  or  dwell  together  like  breth- 


Slavery  in  the  South.  7 

ren,  in  such  perfect  unity.  We  are  content,  however,  with  our  plain  republican  way 
of  doing  these  things;  and  imitating,  as  we  do,  our  worthy  progenitor,  in  th?  deter- 
mined  spirit  for  making  acquisitions,  we  prefer  our  American  mode  by  purchase,  and 
consent  of  parties,  to  the  Irish  plan  of  England. 

There  is  no  hypocrisy  in  al!  this  assumption  of  humanity  and  disinterestedness,  by 
the  British  people  The  Englishman  really  persuades  hi'mself  that  he  makes  war  for 
the  advantage  of  every  body  but  himself)  that  he  conquers  Hindostan  to  rescue  the 
Indians  from  despotbm,  storms  Canton  for  the  comfort  of  Counsellor  Lin,  and  seizes 
upon  countless  islands  and  countries,  to  give  lessons  of  moderation  arid  disinterested- 
ness to  the  whole  family  of  mankind.  There  is  nothing  so  monstrous  that  an  En- 
glishman is  riot  ready  to  believe  it,  if  it  be  flattering  to  the  pride  of  England.  On 
this  subject  his  self-deception  is  without  limit;  ail  contradiction,  inconsiste  cy,  or 
absurdity  is 'overlooked,  or  never  .seen,  if  the  statement  be  in  praise  of  English  cour- 
age, good  faith,  or  humanity.  In  a  work  lately  published — the  Crescent  and  the 
Cross — Mr.-  Elliott  WarburtoM  very  gravely  tells  us  that  England,  alone,  carried  on 
war  for  twenty  years  on  the  whole  world,  for  that  world's  l:berty.  But  no.  he  adds, 
she  was  not  alone — she  had  one  ally  in  this  struggle  for  religion  and  freedom.  In  the 
great  battle  for  the  Christian  faith,  and  civil  liberty,  the  Turk — the  successor  of  tha 
Mahomets  and  \rnuraths — the  representative  of  the  bowstring  and  Koran — made 
common  cause  with  English  bayonets  and  Bibles,  to  defend  the  freedom  and  faith  of 
the  infidel  dogs,  whose  father's  graves  the  Moslem  are  accustomed  to  defile.  This 
was  indeed  a  miracle  of  English  diplomacy;  and  it  may  certainly'  be-  admitted,  that 
the  defence  of  religion  a ^d  th<'  civil  liberty  of  the  whole  world,  was  quite  as  much  tha 
real  object  of  the  Turk,  as  of  the  Englishman. 

The  same  writer  delights  in  denouncing  the  French  atrocities  in  Egypt,  and  else- 
where.  No  tale  on  this  subject  is  incredible  to  hi/n.  In  a  few  pages  after,  he  de- 
scribes an  inundation  produced  by  the  British  army  having  cut  the  great  darn  separa- 
ting the  salt- water  lake  Maadee  from  lake  Mareotis,  by  which  fifty  Arab  villages  w<»re 
swept  away,  and  a  country  fertile  until  visited  by  its  English  allies,  was  converted 
into  a  swamp.  The  authoi  adds,  that  Mehemet  AM  intends  to  drain  the  lake,  and  (6 
lestore  it  to  cultivation;  but,  he  cooly  remarks,  "many  years  will  "  e  required  to  repair 
the  ruin  which  a  few  hours  were  sufficient  to  effect."  If  this  had  been  done  by  the 
French  brigands,  we  should  never  hear  the  last  o<  it.  But,  it  being -an  exploit  of 
British  troops,  there  are,  without  doubt,  forty  excellent  reasons  why  rhey  should  d«»  tt, 
— one  perhaps  being,  that  they  went  to  Egypt  to  defend  and  protect  the  inhabitants 
from  tho  horrors  of  French  domination. 

This  gentle  and  considerate  mode  of  dealing  with  the  lives  and  property  of  their 
allies  by  a  British  nrmy,  so  sensibly  felt  by  their  Turkish  or  Egyptian  friends,  was 
shown  even  more  emphatically  to  the  Spaniards,  during  the  Peninsular  War.  Thft 
inhabitants  of  St.  Sebastian,  Ciudad  Rodrigo,  and  Badajos,  filled  Europe  with  com- 
plaints  of  the  rapine,  house-burning,  rape,-  and  murder,  consequent  upon  the  storming 
of  those  places  by  the  British  troops,  and  Napier  admits  iheir  complaint  to  \>v  well 
founded.  But  what  then? — is  it  reasonable  to  require  soldiers  to  discriminate  so 
•nicely,  as  to. distinguish  between  a  friend's  city  held  against  his  consent  by  an  enemy, 
and  a  city  of  the  enemy  himself  or  to  consider  them,  when  taken  by  storm,  as  enti- 
tled to  ariy  difference  of  treatment?  Besides  this,  was  not  the  army  of  England  rioini; 
battle  for  the  civil  liberty  and  the  religion  of  the  whole  world,  and  surely  they  are 
not  to  be  judged  by  the  common  stan'lard  of  humanity  and  morals,  which  may  be 
supposed  to  regulate  a  more  ordinary  warfare. 

If,  however,  after  all,  any  man  should  be  so  unreasonable  and  impracticable,  as  to 

entertain  doubts  respecting  the  benevolence  and   philanthropy  of  the  British  nation, 

and  to  be  dissatisfied  with   the   evidence  in  their  favor,  exhiliited  so  forcibly  by  th« 

anti-slavery  doings' of  the  great  English, traders  in  negroes — by  their  impeaching  the 

plunderer,  Hastings,  but  refusing  to  restore  the  stolen  goods — by   their   forcing  th« 

'trade  in  opium  on  the  Chinese  at  *the:  point  of  the:  bayonet,  to  give  the  tea-drinhing 

Celestials  another  agreeable   stimulant,  arid  so    improve    their  moral   and  religious 

character;   by  their  peculiar  mode  of  dealing  with  the  dykes  and  cities  of  their  allies, 

when  under  the  protection  yf  a  British   force — we  would  refer  any  such 

•'-  -  •     ..>  ?i  -    <-• 


8  Slavery  in  the  South. 

to  the  domestic  history  of  Great  Britain,  as  proving  conclusively  the  humanity  of  her 
people.  Let  him  advert  to  their  punishments,  amusements,  and  civil  wars — ihe  three 
great  tests  of  llie  temper  and  disposition  of  a  nation — and  he  can  no  longer  fail  to 
acknowledge  the  gentleness  of  the  national  character.  Take  their  punishments  for 
example, -chopping  off  heads  with  axes;  dismembering  the  dead  body  of  the  crimi- 
nal; sticking  up  the  limbs  over  gateways;  gibbeting  in  chains;  killing  by  law  for  the 
theft  ofa  shilling;  imprisoning  and  starving  for  debt;  transporting  for  shooting  a  hare: 
or  their  amusements,  so  particularly  humane — seeing  men  beat  each  other  to  mum 
ies;  bull-baiting;  dog-worrying;  cock-fighting,  where  the  death  of  the  bird  is  ensured 
by  steel  weapons;  tearing  foxes  to  pieces  with  hounds;  steeple-chasing,  where  the  poor 
horse  is  often  killed,  to  say  nothing  of  the  benevolent  gentleman  who  rides  him;  and 
th«  love  of  coarse  practical  jokes,  which  the  taste  and  delicacy  of  Marryatt  so  delight 
in  describing:  or  their  civil  conflicts — so  marked  by  forbearance  and  humanity — from 
the  war  of  the  roses,  to  Cromwell's  gentle  dealing  with  fhe  royalist  Catholics,  or 
Lauderdale's  tender  mercies  to  the  rebel  Scotch  Presbyterian,  or  North's  Indian  allies 
in  our  own  revolution,  the  employment  of  whom  Lord  Chatham  so  strangely  thought 
a  disgrace  to  the  ancestry  of  British  soldiers  and  nobles. 

To  these  excellencies  of  the  English  character,  so  prominently  exhibited  in  their 
disinterested  wars  and  acquisitions  for  the  good  of  mankind,  there  may  be  added  an 
amiable  passion  for  libelling  their  neighbors.  For  many  centuries  the  French  en- 
joyed a  Benjamin's  portion  of  the  good  things  that  flow  from  the  insular  spleen. 
The  frog-eating,  wooden  shoed,  attenuated  Gaul,  was  a  standing  dish  for  the  fun  of 
the  pursy  Saxon.  Even  the  Gallic  courage  was  held  cheap,  and  it  became  a  test  of 
British  patriotism  to  believe,  that  one  Englishman  could  whip  thiee  Frenchmen. 
The  subjects  of  the  Grand  Monarque  bore  the  incessant  barking  of  their  neighbor 
with  great  equanimity,  and  politely  ascribed  his  ill  nature  to  his  climate,  as  Rosseau 
laid  his  own  insanity  when  in  England  on  the  "climat  D'Angleterre."  They  thought 
it  not  surprising  that  men,  who  were  always  hanging  themselves,  should  be  always 
abusing  other  people. 

But  for  some  years  past,  the  United  States  appear  to  have  become  the  favored  na- 
tion. We  have  utterly  eclipsed  the  French  in  sharing  the  civilities  of  the  English 
preM  and  people.  Their  favorite  topic  now  is,  the  unprincipled,  irreligious,  profli- 
gate, spitting,  tobacco  chewing,  julip  drinking,  drawling,  lounging,  unmannerly 
American.  They  roll  the  subject,  like  a  sweet  morsel,  under  (heir  tongues.  They 
hav«  an  affection  for  it.  They  place  it  in  all  kinds  of  lights.  It  assumes  the  shape 
of  travels  in  this  country.  It  makes  a  favorite  article  in  the  reviews.  It  enlivens  a 
leader  in  the  Times  or  Chronicle.  It  gives  poignancy  to  a  speech  in  Parliament* 
It  is  the  staple  of  the  Exeter  love  meetings,  and  helps  out  the  scurrility  of  the  corn 
Exchange.  The)  are  never  weary  of  it.  Ah,  if  they  could  only,  really,  and  in  truth, 
bring  themselves  to  believe  in  their  sayings — if  they  could  but  persuade  themselves 
to  have  faith  in  their  own  invectives — to  credit  their  own  assertion,  that  America  has 
neither  men,  nor  money,  nor  intelligence,  nor  power;  what  comfort  it  would  be  to 
our  English  kin,  how  calmly  and  contentedly  they  would  dream  over  a  future  of 
undisputed  dominion  on  every  shore.  But  .unfortunately  fur  their  happiness,  they  do 
not  believe  one  word  of  the  speculations  of^traveller,  reviewer,  orator  or  editor. 
They  have  no  genuine  faith  in  t!,e  speedy  downfall  of  the  Great  Republic,  whose 
existence  "with  fear  of  change  perplexes  tnonarchs."  They  know  that  their  abuse 
and  misrepresentations  are  all  fudge,  and  they  are  the  more  exasperated  for  knowing 
it.  They  feel,  that  all  their  invective  notwithstanding,  America  will  go  on  in  her 
gigantic  race,  growing  every  day  in  popu'ation,  wealth  and  power.  They  predict 
the  speedy  dissolution  of  her  government,  and  have  done  so  for  fifty  years,  but  are 
the  most  unfortunate  of  all  prophets.  They  neither  believe  themselves,  nor  are 
believed  in  by  others.  It  is  very  much  to  be  lamented.  We  pity  the  unhappy  pa- 
tient, but  know  no  remedy,  unless  it  be  a  course  of  anti-bilious  medicines,  and  absti. 
nence  from  pen  and  ink.  But  if  his  convalescence  depends  on  the  stopping,  or 
retarding  America  in  her  advance  to  a  power,  which  will  defy  all  attacks  or  interfe- 
rence, the  case  is  hopeless. 

One  of  the  most  prominent  points  in  the  abuse  of  the  Americans  at  present  is  their 


in  the  South.  9 

frauds — the  failure  to  pay  their  debts.  There  is  nothing  of  which  the  Englishman  is 
so  intolerant  as  a  non-punctual  debtor.  In  his  own  country  he  hunts  the  poor  devil 
with  bailifis,  as  he  does  a  hare  with  hounds,  and  to  a  foreign  delinquent  his  anger  is 
ferocious.  This  is  all  very  well,  we  have  not  a  word  to  say  for  the  knaves  who 
repudiate.  Let  them  be  roasted  by  the  Quarterly,  or  by  any  of  the  scurrilous  scrib- 
blers, who,  like  Dickens  and  Ma'rryatt,  may  be  paying  off  old  scores  by  libels  on  the 
United  States.  But  it  would  be  as  well  for  the  good  people  of  England  to  remark, 
that  Pennsylvania  is  not  America — that  most  of  the  States  never  failed  to  pay  their 
debts — that  many  of  them  have  none  to  pay — that  the  American  Government  has  paid 
interest  and  principal — that  England's  bankruptcy,  hopeless  and  irretrievable,  awaits 
a  revulsion  only  in  her  Eastern  Empire — that  "trades  proud  empire  hastes  to  swift 
tdecay,"  is  a  truth  not  taught  \  y  her  own  poet  only,  but  by  the  experience  of  all  ages — 
heat  there  is  no  essential  difference  between  the  integrity  of  a  people  who  lefuse,  or 
delay  to  pay  their  debts,  and  one  which  deliberately  contracts  a  debt  which  renders 
ultimate  insolvency  inevitable, — that  whatever  frauds  may  at  present  flourish  on  either 
side  of  the  Atlantic,  they  are  only  humble  imitations  of  one  to  which  England  has  had 
the  honor  to  give  birth — the  South-sea  bubble,  "that  tremendous  hoax,"  as  Lamb 
calls  it  "whose  extent  the  petty  speculators  of  our  day  look  back  upon  with  the  same 
expression  of  incredulous  admiration,  and  hopeless  ambition  of  rivalry,  as  would  be- 
come the  puny  face  of  modern  conspiracy,  contemplating  the  Titan  size  ofVaux's 
superhuman  plot;"* — or  of  another — the  suspension  of  specie  payments  in  1797 — 
when  the  pound  note  sunk  to  the  value  of  fourteen  shillings,  and  Parliament  enacted 
that  it  should  be  regarded  as  worth  twenty,  "a  gross  and  revolting  absurdity,  says 
Lord  Brougham,  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  deliberative  bodies."  The  conse- 
quence of  this  was,  that  "the  havoc  which  the  depreciation  made  in  the  dealings  of 
men  was  incalculable.  Those  who  had  lent  their  money  when  the  currency  was  at 
par,  were  compelled  to  receive  the  depreciated  money  in  payments,  and  thus  loose 
thirty  or  forty  per  cent  of  their  capital.  Those  who  had  let  land  or  houses  at  a  lease, 
must  take  so  much  less  rent  than  they  had  stipulated  to  receive.-  Above  all,  those 
who  had  lent  their  money  to  the  Government,  were  obliged  to  take  two-thirds  only 
of  the  interest  for  which  they  had  bargained,  or  were  liable  to  be  paid  off  with  two- 
thirds  of  the  principal."!  And  this  continued  for  twenty  years  to  be  the  condition  of 
England  so  immaculate  for  honesty. 

Indeed  at  the  present  moment,  the  frauds  perpetrated  under  the  influence  of  the 
existing  rail- road  mania,  are  superior  to  any  that  we  can  pretend  to  produce,  and 
prove  conclusively  that  we  are  very  humble  imitators  of  English  excellence.  The 
bubble  will  burst  to  the  ruin  of  thousands,  and  English  morality  will  sit  amidst  the 
wreck  of  their  fortunes,  and  declaim  on  the  cupidity  of  other  nations. 

In  the  face  of  aM  this,  it  is  quite  ludicrous  to  see  the  grave  charges  brought  against 
America  for  her  exceeding  love  of  the  "almighty  dollar,"  implying,  as  they  do,  that 
the  accusers  are  quite  superior  to  the  weakness  of  attaching  any  undue  value  to  an 
object  so  gross.  WThy,  truely,  there  never  existed  a  nation  where  the  love  of  money, 
or  the  rage  to  obtain  it,  has  been  more  ungovernable  than  in  England — and  with 
reason  too,  for  what  is  an  Englishman,  in  England,  without  money?  He  looses 
caste.  He  flies  his  country.  He  lives  an  exile  in  Belgium,  Italy,  France,  Germany, 
any  where  but  at  home,  where  his  diminished  purse  would  expose  him  to  unendurable 
scorn  from  his  former  equals.  What  will  not  gold  buy  or  do  in  England?  For  what 
but  the  love  of  it.  do  the  landholders  insist  on  their  monopoly  of  coining  money  out  of 
the  stomachs  of  the  people?  In  what  other  region  of  the  globe  will  the  "almighty 
dollar  secure  larger  indulgence,"  to  "Ward,  to  Waters,  Chartres,  or  the  Devil?"  As 
to  us,  it  is  the  standing  complaint  of  English  travellers  in  this  country,  that  even  the 
porr  privilege  of  kicking  the  waiter,  and  bullying  the  landlord,  is  denied  in  America, 
to  the  possessor  of  that  mighty  talisman,  which,  in  England,  numbers  these  enjoy 
ments  among  the  least  of  its  gifts.  It  is  on3  of  the  points  of  inferiority  in  America, 
that  in  this  country,  (he  traveller  is  obliged  to  be  civil  to  the  tavern  keeper,  and  that 
a  full  purse  confers  no  right  to  be  insolent  or  rude  even  to  the  coachman  of  a  stage 
coach, 

t  Lord  Brougham- 


10  Slavery  in  the  South. 

But  we  must  apologize  for  this  digression  on  the  eccentricities  of  ^ur.  English 
neighbors — his  eagerness  one  day  for  making  the  negro  a  slave,  the  next  for  making 
him  free, — his  pocketing  the  spoils,  and  impeaching  the  spoilers,— his  carrying 
civilization  and  religion  into  foreign  lands,  by  presenting  the  bible  with  one  hand, 
and  opium  with  the  other.  It  has  proceeded  from  no  want  of  respect  or  veneration 
for  our  kinsman — quite  the  reverse.  We  have  for  him  all  the  indulgence  of  a  true 
affection,  and  admit  that  he  labors  under  a  sort  of  idiosyncracy — thai  the  habit  of 
praising  himself  and  abusing  others,  is  what  he  cannot  help — that  it  is  one  of  his  lux- 
uries besides,  and  it  would  be  as  reasonable  to  expect  him  to  abandon  his  roast  beef, 
and  plum  pudding,  and  pot  of  London  porter — that  concentration  of  all  the  purities  of 
the  Thames — as  to  forego  his  favorite  enjoyment  of  libelling  his  neighbors.  We 
will  leave  him  then  to  carry  on  the  trade  in  negroes,  on  the  Eastern  shore  of  Africa, 
after  the  old  fashion,  and  on  the  Western  after  the  new — to  make  slaves  on  the  one 
side,  and  apprentices  on  the  other — while  we  follow  Chancellor  Harper  and  Gover- 
nor klarnmond,  in  their  inquiry  into  the  merits  of  that  slavery,  which  our  English 
ancestors  have  established  among  us. 

The  subject  is  one  of  great  magnitude  and  importance.  It  presents  many  ques- 
tions— all  of  them  interesting — as  it  is  considered  in  reference  to  religion,  to  political 
economy,  to  the  interests  of  the  nmster,  to  those  of  the  slave.  Is  slavery  a  sin — 
does  it  conflict  with  the  will  of  God  as  revealed  in  the  Old  and  New  Testament?  Is 
it  the  best  s  'stem  for  society — for  securing  the  greatest  good  to  the  greatest  number? 
Is  it  in  our  own  country  the  best  system  for  the  master — can  he  cultivate  his  lands  to 
better  advantage  with  other  labor?  Does  it  most,  conduce  to  the  welfare  of  the  slave 
in  America — would  not  liberty  be  to  him  a  nominal  blessing,  but  a  real  and  insup- 
portable curse?  These  are  the  most  interesting  points  from  which  the  subject  may 
be  regarded. 

Greatly  the  most  important  view  of  the  subject  is  the  religious  one.  For  assured- 
ly if  slavery  be  adjudged  a  sin,  if  it  be  condemned  by  the  revealed  willof  God,  then 
in  Christendom  in  cannot  continue  to  exist.  It  is  the  duty  of  every  r*-au,  making  the 
laws  of  God  the  rule  of  his  conduct,  to  use  ail  practicable  efforts  to  abolish  whatever 
violates  them.  But  it  is  on  this  ground,  above  all  others,  that  the  defender  of  slavery, 
as  we  find  it  among  us,  is  unassailable.  It  may  be  asserted  with  confidence,  that 
there  is  no  fact  in  history,  and  no  maxim  in  ethics  better  established  by  evidence  or 
argument  than  the  proposition,  that  slavery  was  recognized  under  the  Jewish  theo- 
cracy, and  by  the  Christian  apostles,  as  a  legitimate  form  of  social  life,  a  id  that  being 
so  recognized,  it  cannot  be  deemed  a  sin  by  those  who  teke  the  holy  writings,  old 
and  new,  as  the  only  revealed  will  of  God,  and  standard  of  religious  and  moral  du'.y. 

Slaves  existed,  under  the  divine  government,  among  the  Jewish  people.  The 
Scriptures  distinctly  set  forth  the  rules  by  which  they  shall  be  made,  by  which  they 
shall  be  governed,  by  which  they  shall  be  punished.  They  are  described  as  bought 
for  a  price;  as  the  property  of  their  masters;  as  subject  to  his  will;  as  beaten  with 
stripes;  as  marked;  as  sold;  as  manumitted;  as  placed  in  every  possible  position,  to 
which  the  condition  of  slavery  is  liable.  Slavery  then  is  recognized,  permitted,  regu- 
lated, enjoined,  by  the  Old  Testament;  but  that  which  is  recognized,  permitted,  reg- 
ulated, enjoined,  b>  the  divine  law,  cannot  be  sinful.  To  assert  that  it  may  be,  would 
be  maintaining  a  proposition  quite  as  extravagant,  as  that  two  and  two  make  five. 
Slavery  then  being  so  recognized,  permitted,  regulated  and  enjoined,  can  by  no 
possibility  be  a  sin. 

Again,  when  our  Saviour  taught,  slaves  where  every  were  about  him;  he  fre- 
quently makes  allusion  to  their  condition:  he  denounces  every  form  of  sin  around 
him;  he  reproves  Sadducee  and  Pharisee  without  scruple,  but  he  uses  n^  expression 
that  can  be  tortured  into  a  condemnation  of  slavery. 

The  apostles  were  in  the  midst  of  slavery  in  its  worst  forms  and  abuses  in  Asia 
Minor,  Greece,  and  Italy.  It  could  not,  therefore,  elude  their  observation.  They 
taught  the  new  converts  to  Christianity,  not  only  the  great  truths  of  religion,  and  the 
rules  of  morals,  but  many  minor  observances  incidental  to  their  situation,  many  reg- 
ulations of  behaviour,  and  even  of  dress  becoming  their  new  condition  and  profession, 
and  rebuked  any  infringement  of  them  with  severity.  If  slavery  were  a  sin,  it  could 
not,  therefore  escape  either  their  notice,  or  their  condemnation.  Far  less  would  this 


Slavery  in  the  South.  1 1 

be  possible,  if  it  were  the  heinous  and  devilish  crime  which  Mr.  Clarkson  represents 
it  to  be.  But  there  is  not  in  the  New  Testament  a  single  expression,  which  even 
insinuates  a  condemnation  of  slavery.  Either  then  slavery  is  not  siri,  or  the  Apostles 
not  only  winked  at,  but  wilfully  closed  their  eyes  on  iniquity  of  the  vilest  nature. 

Now  this  is  so  clear,  plain,  and  conclusive,  that  to  a  mind  capable  of  a  candid  and 
honest  judgment,  it  is  irresistible.  Accordingly  every  Christian  teachersince  the 
apostolic  age,  from  Chrysostom  to  Chalmers,  who  believes  that  there  is  meaning  in 
language,  or  whose  opinion  is  worth  a  groat,  admits  that  neither  the  Old  or  iNew 
Testament,  contains  one  word  in  condemnation  of  slavery  or  slaveholders.  The 
great  Greek  father,  commenting  on  a  passage  of  St.  Paul  relating  to  slavery,  gives 
full  force  to  the  doctrine  of  tjie  Apostle  in  reference  to  its  duties — draws  no  distinction 
between  his  general  principles  and  his  particular  precepts,  as  we  shall  see  l)t*i  Way- 
land  do, — drops  no  word  against  slavery,  but  advises  the  Christian  slave  to  continue 
in  this  station,  considering  his  condition  as  one  of  the  many  forms  of  social  life  to  all 
which  the  blessings  of  gospel  truth  are  alike  dispensed.  Chalmers  admits  fully,  that 
slavery  is  not  condemned  by  the  Scriptures,  and  therefore  is  not  a  sin. 

But,  there  is  a  class  of  theological  instructors,  who  use  the  bible  not  so  much  to 
discover  truth,  as  to  support  previously  conceived  opinions.  They  ask,  not  what  St. 
Paul  teaches,  but  what  there  is  in  his  teaching  to  confirm  the  opinions  which  them- 
selves entertain.  It  is  Mr.  Clarkson  that  plants,  the  Apostle  only  waters.  It  is  Dr. 
Wayland  who  builds,  Paul  and  Peter  are  used  to  supply  materials  merely,  if  they 
have  any,  for  the  work.  The  disposition  to  set  aside  the  bible  which  is  commonly 
imputed  to  the  Church  of  Rome,  may  be  more  fairly  ascribed  to  the  class  of  which 
we  speak.  Rome  is  accused  of  substituting  tradition  for  the  Scriptures,  the  nominal 
protestant  postpones  the  gospel  to  his  own  system  of  ethics.  Ifthe  bible  cannot  be  twist- 
ed to  go  with  the  system,  it  is  rejected  with  contempt  and  abhorrence.  "Ifthe  religion 
of  Christ,  says  Dr.  Wayland,  allows  us  to  take  such  a  license  from  such  precepts  as 
these,  the  New  Testament  would  be  the  greatest  curse  that  ever  was  inflicted  on  our 
race."  Or,  to  apply  the  general  remark  to  the  particular  case,  "if  the  religion  of 
Christ  allows  masters  to  hold  slaves — if  it  permits  what  Dr.  Wayland  condemns — 
the  New  Testament  would  be  the  greatest  curse,  ever  inflicted  on  mankind."  Such 
sentences  as  these  manfestly  indicate  the  temper  with  which  the  abolitionists  ap- 
proaches the  Scripture  argument.  It  is  not  one  which  seeks  diligently  and  humbly 
to  know  what  the  bible  teaches,  with  the  resolution  to  submit  to  that  teaching,  what- 
ever it  may  be.  It  calls  arrogantly  and  presumptuously  on  the  divine  writings  to 
sustain  the  position  ofthe  abolitionist,  It  searches  them  merely  for  weapons  of  offence 
against  slavery,  and  if  it  be  once  driven  to  confess  that  they  furnish  none,  it  denounces 
the  book  as  an  imposture  and  a  curse. 

The  argument  of  the  same  parties  speak  this  sentiment  also,  in  a  mode  more 
covert,  but  equally  plain.  It  sets  up,  as  effectually,  a  standard  of  right  and  wrong, 
independent  of  the  law^  and  the  gospel,  and  supplants  the  eternal  word  by  some 
crotchety  abstract  notion  of  their  own.  If  they  do  not  repudiate  the  Scriptures  in 
direct  terms,  they  do  so  indirectly,  by  undermining  their  character  and  authority  as 
the  word  of  God.  Take  for  example,  the  argument  ofthe  President  of  Brown  Uni- 
versity in  reference  to  the  Old  Tesiament,  in  answer  to  Dr.  Fuller.  Dr.  Wayland 
admits  unreservedly  that  slavery  existed  in  the 'Jewish  nation  during  the  theocracy — 
that  it  was  not  forbidden — that  it  was  regulated  by  the  divine  law.  Very  well,  says 
his  opponent,  then  slavery  is  not  a  sin,  because  a  sin  is  an  offence  against  the  re- 
vealed will  of  God,  and  you  grant  that  slavery  is  not  forbidden  by  the  Old  Testament. 
Not  so  fast  rejoins  the  worthy  President;  I  admit,  it  is  true,  that  slavery  is  permited 
by  the  inspired  word  of  God,  but  I  deny  that  what  is  permitted  by  that  word  is  there- 
fore no  sin.  Dr.  Fuller  stands  aghast  at  this,  and  with  uplifted  hands,  asks  his  wor- 
thy brother  of  Brown  how  this  can  be.  Nothing  more  easy,  replies  the  moral  phi- 
losopher— other  acts  are  permitted  by  the  Old  Testament  which  are  sins — as,  for 
example,  polygamy — and,  consequently,  it  does  not  follow,  because  a  thing  is  per- 
mitted by  the  divine  will,  thai,  therefore,  it  is  not  a  sin.  But,  with  all  due  re'spect  to 
one  so  high  in  position  as  a  Christian  teacher,  another  conclusion  does  follow  from  his 
position — that  the  Old  Testament  permits  what  is  sinful — it  follows  that  the  Old  Tes. 


12  Slavery  in  the  South. 

lament  is  not  the  word  of  thai  God,  who  is  of  purer  eyes  than  to  behold  iniquity,  much 
less  to  permit  it — it  follows  that  Dr.  Wayland  must  abandon  his  bible,  or  his  argu- 
ment. The  most  inveterate  infidel  could  not  more  effectually  demolish  the  authority 
of  the  Scriptures,  than  by  proving  that  they  enjoin,  or  permit  a  sin. 

Thus,  either  by  sentences  like  the  above,  or  by  arguments  like  the  last  quoted,  the 
authority  of  the  Old  Testament,  as  the  word  of  God,  is  annihilated  to  the  mind  of  the 
abolitionist,  and  be  cornes  to  regard  Moses*  as  an  ordinary  lawgiver  to  be  judged, 
with  his  code,  by  the  unerring  ethics  of  modern  presidents  of  colleges,  and  professors 
of  moral  philosophy.  Now,  for  our  part,  admitting,  as  we  freely  do,  that  the  moral 
philosophy  of  the  amiable  head  of  Brown  University,  is  a  very  respectable  school 
book,  and  vastly  superior  to  the  other  productions  of  a  like  nature,  which  inundate  us 
from  the  New-England  press,  such  as  the  various  performances  of  Peter  Parley — of 
fences,  as  they  are,  against  the  young,  fully  equal  to  that,  of  the  pedagogue  of  Falerii, 
and  worthy  of  the  same  punishment — yet  we  are  not  prepared  to  abandon  even  Paley 
or  Smith,  or  Hutchinson,  for  Dr.  Wayland,  and  we  cannot  hesitate  to  take  the  Old 
Testament  and  slavery,  in  preference  to  the  "Moral  Science"  and  abolition. 

In  a  manner  equally  summary,  and  equally  inconsistent  with  its  character  as  the 
word  of  God,  Dr.  Wayland  deals  with  the  New  Testament.  He  admits  that  it  does 
not  condemn  slavery.  He  will  not  deny  that  it  alludes  to  slavery  as  a  form  of  social 
]jfe — that  it  regulates  the  conduct  of  the  slave  as  a  member  of  the  Christian  church. 
But,  surely  what  the  apostles  suffered  daily  before  their  eyes  without  rebuke — what 
they  prescribed  rules  for — what  they  therefore  permitted,  could  not  be  a  sin;  an 
enormous  sin,  as  the  abolitionists  consider  it. 

The  answer  of  the  Clarkson  school  to  this  is  a  singular  piece  of  protestant  Jesuitism. 
True,  they  say,  the  apostles  did  not  condemn  slavery  in  their  preaching  and  conver- 
sation, but  they  established,  in  their  writings,  certain  general  principles,  which  would 
gradually  destroy  whatever  was  inconsistent  with  Christian  truth,  and  they  left  slavery 
to  the  operation  of  these  principles.  Now,  however  proper  and  necessary  a  reference 
to  these  general  doctrines  may  be,  as  to  abuses  which  might  arise  in  alter  times,  and 
of  which  the  apostles  knew  nothing,  who  can  believe  that  they  were  intended  as  a 
substitute  for  their  direct  condemation  of  wrong,  and  sin  committed  daily  before  their 
eyes?  Is  there  any  class  afevil  doers  so  high  as  to  escape  the  censure  of  Christ  and 
his  apostles?  The  Saviour  rebukes  the  wise  and  the  great,  the  rich  and  the  powerful, 
those  who  sat  in  Moses'  seat.  The  Apostle  Paul  denounces  idolatry  in  the  midst  of 
Athens  and  Rome.  Is  there  any  thing  so  minute  in  the  misconduct  of  Christians  as 
to  elude  their  notice?  The  apostle  reproves  a  departure  from  propriety  in  the  dress 
even  of  the  disciples.  But  there  is  not  a  word  of  condemnation  for  the  sin  of  slavery 
— that  enormous  wrong — that  detestable  crime.  Why  is  this?  It  is  easy  of  expla- 
nation. The  apostle  satisfied  his  conscience  by  propounding  certain  doctrines  in  his 
writings,  which  would  in  time  undo  the  mischief  which  he  himself  was  inevitably 
doing,  by  permitting,  by  countenancing  an  offence  against  God.  It  is  not  easy  to 
see  after  this,  with  what  propriety  the  apostle  could  ask  the  questions, — "thou  that 
preachest  a  man  shall  not  steal,  dost  thou  steal" — "thou  that  ahhorrest  idols,  dost 
thou  commit  sacrilege" — "thou  that  teachest  another,  teachest  thou  not  thyself." 
He  might  have  added — thou  that  veachest  indirectly  by  general  maxims  that  slavery 
is  sin,  dost  thou  sanction  it  directly  by  thy  daily  conversation  and  preaching. 

The  assumptionthat  the  apostles  would,  or  did  abstain  from  censuring  any  existing 
vice  by  direct  precepts,  and  contented  themselves  with  turning  it  over  to  the  opera- 
tion of  their  general  principles,  is  just  the  reverse  of  the  truth.  They  give  us  prin- 
ciples for  cases,  where  they  had  no  opportunity  for  giving  precepts.  For  what  are 
we  now  doing  when  we  attempt  to  apply  to  any  particular  case  the  principles  es- 
tablished by  the  apostles?  We  merely  endeavor  to  discover  what  their  precepts  would 
have  been,  if  the  case  had  existed  in  their  own  day.  If  slavery  had  never  been 
known  before,  and  now  for  the  first  time,  in  the  progress  of  missionary  labors,  the 
Christian  preacher  had  discovered  it  in  somo  remote  tribe  or  country,  the  question 
would  naturally  arise,  whether  it  was  bonsistent  with  the  principles,  the  spirit,  tem- 
per, and  scope  of  the  apostolic  doctrine;  or,  in  other  words,  whether  the  apostles,  if 
now  living,  would  approve  or  condemn  this  newly  found  form  of  social  life.  Bat 


Slavery  in  the  South.  1 8" 

there  is  no  room  for  such  enquiries  in  relation  to  slavery,  when  it  is  admitted  that  the 
apostles  knew  it,  saw  it,  spoke  about  it.  The  only  proper  question  then  is,  what  did 
the  apostles  speak?  Did  they  condemn  it?  Suppose  that  they  saw  it,  and  were  silent 
about  it.  The  silence  of  the  apostles  is  not  like  the'  silence  of  other  writers.  It 
means  something.  In  the  case  supposed  it  would  mean  that  there  was  nothing  worthy  • 
of  condemnation.  But  they  were  not  silent.  They  prescribed  rules  for  the  conduct 
of  the  slave;  for  the  conduct  of  the  master.  Are  we  to  believe  that  the  apostles  re- 
gulated  a  sin? — defined  the  mode  in  which  it  should  be  indulged?  Would  not  this 
be  approuin<>  it?  Apply  the  reasoning  to  any  other  sin.  Suppose  the  apostle  had 
written  to  the  Ephesians,  giving  certain  directions  as  to  the  manner  in  which  they 
should  offer  sacrifice  to  the  great  goddess  of  their  temple.  Would  it  be  enough  to 
tell  us  that  they  had  settled  certain  principles  and  truths  respecting 'the  existence  and 
attributes  of  th^  Deity,  which  would  in  due  time  extinguish  idolatry.  But  Dr.  Way- 
land  tells  us,  "we  are  not  competent  to  decide  upon  the  manner  in  which  God  can, 
or  does  teach."  It  is  very  possible,  therefore,  that  the  apostles  may  teach  one  thing 
by  maxims,  and  another  by  the  tolerance  of  their  daily  conversation;  that  their 
preaching  may  lean  one  way,  and  then  general  doctrines  another;  that  their  precepts 
and  their  principles  do  not  agree;  that  the  first  were  meant  for  their  own  times,  and 
the  last  for  all  times  after. 

We  have  sometimes  heard  irreverent  wits  talk  of  the  difference  between  the  say- 
ings and  doings;  the  theory  and  practice;  the  life  and  preaching  of  the  modern 
ministers  and  teachers  of  divine  truth,  but  we  never  new  the  jest  to  be  directed  against 
the  Apostle  Paul.  It  remained  for  the  President  of  Brown  University  to  discover,  that 
the  frail  bishops  and  pastors  of  our  own  times,  may  plead  the  example  of  the  apostles, 
for  the  diversity  between  their  principles  and  their  conduct.  We  have  not  had  the 
advantage  of  reading  the  "moral  science,"  but  we  shall  take  the  earliest  opportunity 
oflooking  for  the  chapter  establishing  the  rules,  by  which  the  balance  may  be  pre- 
served between  a  divines  public  teaching,  and  his  private  conversation;  between  his 
doctrines  intended  for  the  world  at  large,  and  the  precepts  which  he  reserves  for  his 
own  domestic  or  social  circle;  between  the  right,  and  the  expedient. 

But  admit  that  the  apostles  belong  to  that  class  of  Christian  instructors,  whose 
preaching  and  whose  principles  are  not  always  in  accordance — that,  on  the  subject 
of  slavery,  they  have  refused  to  rebuke  an  offence  daily  before  their  eyes,  and  have 
been  content  to  entrust  its  removal  to  the  influence  of  the  general  doctrines  of  Scrip- 
ture. By  what  authority  does  Dr.  Wayland  depart  from  the  apostolic  practice? — 
why  does  he  disregard  St.  Paul's  example? — the  supposed  mode  of  teaching,  as  to 
slavery,  indirectly  by  general  principles,  is  what  he  considers  God's  mode  of  teaching; 
why  does  he  pursue  another?  He  admits  that  there  is  not  one  word  in  the  New 
Testament  condemning  slavery;  why  are  there  so  many  pages  in  Dr.  Wayland's 
writings?  Whence  this  contrariety  between  the  president  and  the  apostle?  We  are 
assured,  with  all  imaginable  dogmatism,  that  slavery  is  a  sin.  Why  is  it.' — have 
Christ  or  the  aposvles  said  so? — no,  but  Mr.  Tappari  and  Mr.  Birney  have.  It  is  a 
wrong.  Do  the  Scriptures  condemn  it? — no,  but  Dr.  Wayland,  President  of  Brown 
University  does.  It  ought  to  be  abolished.  Does  St.  Paul  teach  this? — not  a  word 
like  it,  but  Mr  Clarkson  has  issued  his  bulls  to  that  effect,  of  a  breed  quite  as  formi- 
dable as  those  of  Lord  Peter  in  the  tale  of  a  tub.  Will  christians  in  their  senses 
hesitate  between  St.  Paul  and  Mr.  Clarkson,  or  Dr.  Wayland,  or  Mr.  Birney? — 
certainly  they  will.  The  Northern  Methodist  Church,  the  Northern  Baptist  Church, 
all  the  dreamers  of  dreams,  and  seers  of  visions,  and  appealers  to  moral  codes  purer 
than  that  of  the  bible,  turn  their  backs  on  St.  Paul,  and  kick  the  Old  and  Ne'w  Testa- 
ment into  the  kennel,  as  a  curse.  The  continued  existence  of  the  Christian  religion, 
such  professed  friends  as  these  notwithstanding,  is,  perhaps,  the  most  striking  evidence 
of  its  divine  origin.  If,  as  we  ha^e  heard  a  friend  remark,  a  fo-tress  is  assailed  from 
without,  and  is  undermined  within  by  treacherous  defenders,  and  still  from  the  ram- 
parts the  standard  continues  to  fly  year  after  year,  who  can  resist  the  conviction,  that 
a  power  more  than  human  defends  and  protects  its  walls? 

The  substance  then  of  Dr,  Wayland's  argument  is  this.  It  is  true  that  slavery 
was  permitted  by  the  Old  Testament,  but  that  doeg  not  prove  that  slavery  is  no  sin, 


14  Slavery  in  t/ie  South. 

because  other  sins  were  permitted  by  the  Old  Testament.  It  is  true  that  there  is 
not  a  word  in  the  New  Testament  condemning  slavery,  but  that  is  because  the  apos- 
tles determined  that  the  best  mode  of  rebuking  this  sin,  was  to  say  nothing  against  it — 
to  regulate  the  mode  in  which  it  should  be  indulged — to  leave  it  to  the  general  spirit 
of  Christianity  to  abolish  the  evil.  It  is  not,  Dr.  Waylaud  add.s,  for  man  to  ask  why 
the  apostles  pursued  this  way  of  teaching  in  reference  to  slavery.  It  is  enough  that 
it  is  God's  way.  But  in  our  day,  the  apostolic,  or  God's  manner  of  teaching,  is  no 
longer  the  right  one.  The  abolitionists — Mr.  Clarkson,  Dr.  Wayland, — have 
changed  all  that.  They  have  grown  wiser  than  St.  Paul,  and  have  been  blessed 
with  a  new  revelation  like  the  Mormon.  The  apostles  said  not  a  word  in  censure  of 
slavery  or  slaveholders;  the  abolitionists  rail  at  them  like  fishwornen — St.  Paul  regu- 
lates the  duty  of  master  to  slave,  and  of  slave  to  master;  Dr.  Way  land  denies  that 
any  such  relation  can  properly  exist — the  apostle  restores  to  the  master  the  runaway 
slave,  the  abolitionists  entice  the  slave  to  runaway — the  first,  directs  the  believing 
slave  to  continue  in  his  condition,  to  be  content,  to  regard  himself  and  master  as 
equally  the  servants  of  Christ,  and  equally  bound  by  the  duties  of  their  several  sta- 
tions; the  last,  counsels,  discontent,  hatred,  disobedience,  and  revolt, — the  one  ad- 
dresses the  owner  of  slaves  as  a  beloved  brother;  the  other  reviles  him  as  a  miscre- 
ant. It  is  evident  that  we  must  choose  between  St.  Paul  and  Dr.  Wayland.  It  is 
not  possible  to  serve  two  such  masters. 

On  this  branch  of  the  subject — the  relation  of  slavery  to  religion — we  cannot,  too 
highly  commend  the  argument  of  Dr.  Fuller.  It  is  clear,  acute,  and  unanswerable. 
His  opponent,  in  attempting  to  reply,  looses  himself  in  a  mist  of  metaphysical  subtle- 
ties, like  one  of  Homer's  heroes,  whose  exploits  were  suddenly  cut  short  by  a  fog. 
We  hope  that  the  worthy  President  of  Brown,  like  the  Greek  hero,  will  have  sense 
and  piety  enough  to  pray  for  light,  and  not  go  on  vainly  to  do  battle  in  the  dark. 

There  are  some  little  things  that  we  could  wish  amended  in  Dr.  Fuller's  letters. 
Ho  is  a  strong  and  skilful  disputant,  but  a  somewhat  incautious  one.  We  do  not 
understand  why  slaver)'  should  not  continue  to  be  possible,  when  for  four  thousand 
years  it  has  been  actual,  or  why  its  continuance  should  not  be  desirable,  when,  as 
regards  the  black,  it  is  a  choice  between  servitude  and  extinction.  We  could  wish 
too  for  a  little  prunirng  of  his  excessive  deferences  and  solicitudes  for  his  reverend 
brother,  and  that  he  had  been  a  little  more  chary  of  promoting  untried  books  to  the 
dignity  of  classical  standards.  But  we  know  the  kindly  hunlor  from  which  this  comes, 
and  that  he  could  not  possibly  break  his  worthy  brother's  head  even  sylogistically, 
without  an  affectionate  solicitude  to  apply  a  plaster  to  the  wound.  We  notice  the 
sl'ghl  defects,  only  because  the  letters  are  so  excellent,  as  to  make  us  desire  to  see 
hem  without  a  fault. 

The  Southern  States  then  have  nothing  to  apprehend  in  discussing  the  question  of 
slavery,  as  connected  with  the  religion  of  the  bible.  For  those  other  religions,  which 
virtually  repudiate  the  bible,  whether  they  go  by  the  name  of  Mormonism,  or  aboli- 
tionism, or  assume  the  garb  of  some  refined  system  of  ethics,  transcending  the  morals 
of  the  apostles,  we  have  no  concern.  They  will  perish  and  corne  to  naught,  like  a 
thousand  fanatical  follies  which  have  gone  before  them. 

Slavery,  in  its  relation  to  political  economy,  presents  the  next  important  question 
connected  with  it.  Is  it  better  for  the  whole  community,  including  both  master  and 
slave — the  entire  body  politic,  or  State — that  predial  and  domestic  slaveay  should,  or 
should  not,  exist?  Does  it  secure  the  greatest  good  to  the  greatest  number?  This  is 
the  question,  as  Chancellor  Harper  propounds  it.  He  adds,  "let  me  not  be  understood 
as  taking  upon  me  to  determine,  that  it  is  better  that  it  should  exist.  God  forbid  that 
the  responsibility  of  deciding  such  a  question  should  be  thrown  on  me,  or  my  coun- 
tryman. l'»ut  this  I  will  say,  and  not  without  confidence,  that  it  is  in  the  power  of  no 
human  intellect  to  establish  the  contrary  proposition; — the  proposition,  that  it  is  better 
it  should  not  exist.  This  is  probably  known  to  but  one  Being,  and  is  concealed "from 
human  sagacity."  Chancellor  Harper  then  goes  into  a  clear,  comprehensive,  philo- 
sophical  argument,  which  e.ven  an  opponent,  if  he  be  an  ingenuous  one,  must  admire. 
Slavery,  he  says,  has  existed  in  all  ages,  and  in  almost  all  nations.  It  has  been  the 
instrument  for  the  promotion  of  civilization  every  where.  In  no  country,  have  the 


Slavery  in  the  South.  ]  5 

arts  or  improvements  of  society  flourished  or  advanced,  but  by  the  aid  of  slavery. 
The  savage  will  not  labor:  War,  the  chase,  an  indolent  sensuality  divide  his  life. 
This  Condition  of  society  endures  as  long  as  the  barbarian  continues  to  put  his  prison- 
ers to  death.  When  he  ceases  to  amuse  himself  after  a  victory,  by  making  riddles  of 
his  captives  with  arrows,  or  tearing  their  flesh  with  pincers,  or  dashing  out  their 
brains  with  a  tomahawk,  and  discovers  that  he  can  make  ihem  contribute  to  his  wants 
by  preserving  theii  lives,  then  improvement  commences.  The  continuous,  systema- 
tic, persevervinn  labor  of  the  prisoner,  converted  into  a  slave,  produces  food,  com- 
forts, conveniences,  luxuries.  The  roaming  savage  becomes  fixed.  Agriculture 
advances;  the  arts  appear,  and  are  cultivated,  and  society  gradually,  but.  certainly, 
assumes  the  form  of  civilized  life.  This  is  the  history  of  prog  ess  among  ail  nations. 
Slavery  is  the  instrument,  the  means,  by  which  the  barbarian  reaches  the  advantages 
of  civilization.  In  warm  countries,  it  is  impossible,  perhaps,  after  attaining  them, 
to  perpetuate  them  by  any  other  other  means.  Compulsory  labor  is  the  only  labor 
which  can  be  sufficiently  depended  on,  to  counteract  the  influ  nee  of  a  hot  climate 
A  tropical  sun  at  once  produces  an  indisposition  to  work,  and  supplies  without  it,  all 
that  is  necessary  for  sustaining  life.  In  severer  climates  where  the  danger  of  freez- 
ing, and  starving,  and  the  absolute  necessity  of  shelter,  are  sufficiently  compulsory, 
without  the  help  of  a  master's  control,  anew  modification  of  social  life  arises,  and  a 
different  condition  of  society  is  gradually  established.  Servitude  takes  the  place  of 
slavery.  The  hired  laborer  supersedes  the  smve.  But  it  is  by  no  means  certain, 
that  this  change  is  for  the  benefit  of  the  last. 

In  the  progress  of  that  state  of  society ,  to  which  we  have  just  adverted,  population 
increases;  labor  becomes  superabundant.  It  is  discovered  that  the  work  of  the  slave 
no  lunger  pnys  for  his  support.  The  period  comes  when  the  master  is  willing  to  run 
away  from  his  slaves,  or,  in  other  words,  to  manumit  them,  and  get  rid  of  feeding, 
clothing,  and  housing  them.  He  perceives  that  he  can  hire  the  peasant  for  less  than 
t  co-ts  him  to  maintain  the  slave,  and  therefore  he  manumits  the  slave.  The  freedom 
conferred  on  the  serf  in  Europe  a  few  centuries  ago,  was  a  concession,  not  to  the 
serf,  but  to  the  master.  It  was  a  change  for  the  benefit  of  capital,  not  of  labor.  It 
was  intended  !o  place  the  master,  the  proprietor,  the  capitalist,  in  «i  better  condition 
than  before.  Tlu-re  was  nothing  in  society,  as  then  constituted  in  any  nation  of 
Kurope,  that  could  by  any  possibility  have  produced  a  concession  to  the  peasant. 
Who  was  he?  what  was  be?  that  a  change,  in  the  fundamental  laws  of  any  govern- 
ment, should  be  made  for  his  advantage,  or  by  his  advice?  The  change  was  intended 
for  the  benefit  of  the  lord — for  ihe  advantage  of  the  master  only,  wns  the  serf  con- 
verted info  the  kt  master  less  slave."  When  he  was  made  a  free  man,  he  was  driven 
from  a  condition  which  he  himself  had  chosen  as  a  refuge  from  freedom.  Gibbon 
relates  lhat,  on  the  establishment  of  the  feudal  system  in  Europe,  the  poor,  the  feeble, 
the  timid,  sought  admission  among  the  bondsmen  of  ihe  powerful  lords.  They  were 
glad  to  transfer  to  ano'lier,  ihai  right  of  property  in  themselves,  which  the  abolition- 
ists tell  us  cannot  be  alienated.  When  the  nobles  subsequently  found  them  an  in- 
cmnbrance.  they  restored  hem  to  their  pr<  vious  condition — the  condition  of  free 
laborers.  Is  that  condition  now,  any  better  than  it  was,  when  the  poor  ran  away 
from  it,  by  enrolling  themselves  among  the  serfs  of  the  nobles?  In  the  increased  and 
crowded  population  of  Europe,  is  it  easier  for  the  laborer  to  win  his  bread  by  the 
sweat  of  lus  brow?  Is  it  less  difficult  to  procure  clothes,  lodgings,  fuel?  Is  land 
more  easy  of  rent?  Docs  not  every  day  afford  evidence  of  the  continued  desire  of 
the  landholder  to  get  rid  of  the  manumitted  serf — to  drive  off  tin  cotter  from  his  es 
late,  and  free  himsell  from  the  remains  of  the  servile  incumbrance  left  upon  his  hands? 
It  is  true  that  the  violence  of 'he  middle  ages,  which  drove  the  feeble  and  the  poor 
into  slavery,  exists  no  longer,  but  want,  destitution,  misery,  staivation,  constitute  a 
motive  quite  as  irresistible — hunger  is  as  powerful  as  the  sword.  The  laborer  lives 
b^  work,  but  he  cannot  obtain  it.  The  complaint  of  thousands  continual^',  is,  lhat 
they  are  not  ab'e  to  get  employment.  How  happy  would  they  be,  to  be  always  se- 
cure of  it — to  !,old  their  employer  bound  never  to  dismiss  his  laborers,  without  finding 
for  them  auother  employer — to  enjoy  one  of  the  benefits  conferred  by  the  condition 


16  Slavery  in  the  South. 

of  the  slave.  He  is  always  secure  of  employment,  always,  therefore,  secure  of  sub. 
sistence.  And  lo  this  condition,  only  call  it  by  another  name,  we  cannot  but  think 
that  thousands  of  European  operatives  would  rejoice  to  be  brought. 

Where,  then,  is  tlje  essential  or  important  practical  difference  between  the  servi- 
tude of  modern  Europe,  and  American  slavery?  Except  in  the  fancy  of  tho^se,  who 
compose  new  Eutopias,  or  imaginary  Republics,  a  laboring  class — a  very  large  class 
who  depend  on  daily  labor  for  daily  bread — musi  exist  in  every  civilized  state.  In 
one  country  this  laboring  class  is  free,  that  is,  he  may  seek  his  own  master,  and  make 
his  own  contract.  But  want  drives  him  to  take  the  least  possible  wages  that  can 
sustain  life.  He  is  very  often  unable  lo  obtain  employment  at  all.  Then  he  starves. 
He  sleeps  under  hedges.  To  be  able  to  get  into  a  barn  upon  straw  is  a  luxury. 
His  wife  and  children  suffer  with  him.  If  he  falls  sick,  they  perish  together.  In 
another  country,  the  laborer  is  transferred  by  one  employer  to  another — his  contract 
is  made  for  him.  He  is  sure  of  employment,  and  therefore  sure  of  subsistence.  He 
never  wanders  about  in  pursuit  of  work,  lie  has  a  fixed  home,  certain  support,  food, 
clothing,  help  when  sick.  "In  periods  of  commercial  revulsion  and  distress,  in 
countries  of  free  labor,  the  distress  fulls  principally  on  the  laborer.  In  those  of  slave 
labor,  it  falls  almos  exclusively  on  the  employer.  In  the  former,  when  a  business 
becomes  unprofitable,  the  employer  dismisses  his  laborers,  or  lowers  their  wages. 
But  with  the  latter,  it  is  the  very  period  at  which  he  is  least  able  to  dismiss  his 
laborers;  and  if  he  would  suffer  a  farther  loss,  he  cannot  reduce  their  wages."*  If 
with  the  free  laborer,  there  be  better  chances  for  the  few  of  superior  mind  to  improve 
their  condition,  with  the  slave  there  is  greater  certainty,  for  the  mass,  of  security 
from  want  and  starvation.  There  are  compensations  in  either  condition  of  society, 
which  makes  it  not  easy  to  determine  which  best  secures  the  greatest  happiness  to 
the  laboring  poor. 

It  is  with  good  reason  then,  that  Gov.  Hammond  affirms,  "that  slavery  is  an  es- 
tablished and  inevitable  condition  of  human  society."  You  may  give  it  another  name 
but  the  case  of  the  laboring  poor  in  countries  of  tree  labor,  does  not  materially  differ 
from  that  of  the  slave.  The  Marquis  of  Normandy,  as  quoted  by  Gov.  Hammond, 
declares  the  English  operatives  "in  effect  slaves."  They  are  more  degraded  phy- 
sically, and  morally,  than  our  slaves."  To  prove  this,  and  show  that  it  is  not  a 
rhetorical  flourish  only,  a  number  of  passages  are  quoted  by  Hammond,  from  ihe 
reports  of  the  commissioners  appointed  by  parliament  to  investigate  the  condition  of 
the  operatives.  We  refer  to  his  .letters  for  a  few  of  the  cases  of  suffering,  ignorance, 
and  brutal  degradation,  which  abound  throughout  England,  and  will  inflict  but  one  or 
two  upon  the  reader.  "I  wish,"  says  a  Commissioner,  *  lto  call  the  attention  of  the 
Board  to  the  pits  about  Brampton.  The  seams  are  so  thin  that  several  of  them  have 
only  two  feet  head. way,  to  all  the  working.  They  are  worked  altogether  by  boys 
from  8  to  12  years  of  age,  on  all  fours,  with  a  dogbelt  and  a  chain.  The  passages 
being  neither  ironed  nor  wooded,  are  o:ten  an  inch  or  two  thick  with  mud.  In  Mr. 
Barns'  pit,  these  poor  boys  have  to  drag  the  barrows  with  one  cwt.  of  coal  or  slack  60 
limes  a  day  60  yards,  and  the  empty  barrows  back  without  once  straightening  their 
backs."  "Richard  North,  aged  16,  went  into  the  pit  at  7 — when  he  drew  by  the 
girdle  and  chain  his  skin  was  broken,  and  the  blood  ran  down."  When  they  refused 
to  draw  they  were  beat  en.  In  these  pits,  girls  were  at  work,  clad  in  nothing  but 
their  shifts,  among  naked  men.  In  Liverpool,  40,000  persons  live  in  cellars;  in 
Manchester,  15,000.  In  England,  22,000  people  dwell  in  barns,  tents,  and  in  the 
open  air.  According  to  Mr.  O'Connell,  there  are  now  in  Ireland  alone  4,000,000  of* 
paupers  in'rags  without  homes,  ''living  on  potatoes  when  they  can  get  them,  and  to 
whom  a  blanket  is  an  unknown  luxury."  D'israeli,  in  a  work  of  fiction  it  is  true, 
but  one  professing  to  give  a  picture  less  horrible  than  the  facts  would  justify,  abounds 
in  details  of  misery  that  are  almost  incredible.  We  refer  our  readers  to  the  work, 
and  particularly  to  the  biographical  notice  of  Mr.  Devilsdust,  the  foundling  pauper. 

It  is  sufficiently  evident  from  these  accounts,  that  the   condition  of  the  English 

*  Harper's  Memoir. 


Slavery  in  tfie  South,  17 

operative  is  not  superior  to  that  of  the  American  slave.  We  have  no  such  destitution 
and  misery  in  the  United  States.  Our  slaves  are  better  fed,  better  clothed,  and  cer- 
tainly not  more  ignorant  or  immoral.  We  challenge  comparison  on  this  subject. 
Take  for  example  the  relative  condition  of  the  children  of  slave  and  operative.  The 
very  worst  feature  in  the  case  of  the  laboring  poor  of  England,  is  the  miserable  stat 
of  the  children  of  tender  years,  of  both  sexes,  working,  under  exposures  which  set 
all  decency  at  defiance,  and  harnessed  literally  to  their  work.  The  chid  /i  e 
slave,  to  the  age  of  twelve  or  thirteen,  is  as  happy  as  perfect  exemption  from  work 
and  care  can  make  him. 

There  is  this  essential  difference,  too,  in  the  case  of  the  English  operative,  and  the 
African  slave.  The  one  has  been  degraded,  by  the  increasing  hardships  of  his  situa- 
tion, from  a  better  condition;  the  other  has  been  raised  by  slavery  from  a  lower  one — 
the  -vorst  features  of  English  social  life  were  noP  known  two  hundred  years  ago  in 
England;  Mr.  Clarkson  himself  would  hardly  deny,  that  the  African  in  America  is  a 
civilized  and  cultivated  being,  compared  with  the  savage  of  the  slave  roast 

In  reference  to  this  suffering  and  degrading  class  of  operatives,  Chancellor  Harper 
says,  '-II  some  superior  being  would  impose  on  the  laboring  poor  of  any  country — 
this  as  their  unalterable  condition — you  shall  be  saved  from  the  torturing  anxiety 
concerning  your  own  future  support,  and  that  of  your  children,  which  now  pursues 
you  through  life,  and  haunts  you  in  death — you  shall  be  under  the  necessity  of  regu- 
lar and  healthful,  though  not  excessive  labor — in  return  you  shall  have  the  ample 
supply  of  your  natural  wants — you  may  follow  the  instinct  of  nature  in  becoming  pa- 
rents, without  apprehending  that  this  supply  will  fail  yourselves,  or  your  children — 
you  shall  be  supported  and  relieved  in  sickness,  and  in  old  age,  wear  out  the  remains 
of  existence  among  familiar  scenes  and  associates,  without  being  driven  to  beg,  or  to 
resort  to  the  hard  arid  miserable  chanty  of  a  wjrkhouse — you  shall  of  necessity  be 
temperate,  and  shall  have  neither  the  temptation  or  opportunity  to  commit  great 
crimes,  or  practise  the  more  destructive  vices — how  inappreciable  would  the  boon  b  ? 
thought."  "Yet  this  is  a  very  near  approach  to  the  condition  of  our  slaves;"* 
and  we  confidently  ask,  whether  the  laboring  millions  of  Great  Britain  would  not 
joyfully  accept  a  proposal  from  their  landlords,  permitting  them  to  give  their  labor 
for  life,  to  be  ensured  a  dwelling,  food,  clothing,  fire,  and  the  support  of  their  fami- 
lies at  their  death.  What  else  is  slavery  but  such  an  exchange?  "May  we  not  then 
say  justly  that  we  have  less  slavery,  or  more  mitigated  slavery  than  any  other  country 
in  the  civilized  world. "f 

The  misfortune  with  the  theorists  and  speculators  on  the  subject  of  slavery  is,  that 
they  compare  the  condition  of  the  slave  not  with  the  laboring  poor  of  their  own  or 
other  countries,  but  with  some  imaghary  state  of  society,  where  there  is  no  excessive 
labor,  no  severe  privation,  no  want,  starvation,  or  wretchedness.  "But  theorists 
cannot  control  nature  and  bend  her  to  their  views, "J  and  the  class  marked  by  pover- 
ty, and  hard  work,  and  want,  will  continue  to  the  end  of  time  among  all  nations. 
Whether  this  class  be  in  a  better  condition  as  serfs,  or  free  laborers,  is  a  question, 
which  Chancellor  Harper  says  no  human  sagacity  can  fairly  solve. 

To  the  several  objections  to  slavery,  made  from  vaiious  quarters,  the  writers  to 
whom  we  have  referred,  give  sound  and  satisfactory  answers.  It  is  said  that  the  life 
of  the  slave  is  insecure.  We  challenge  comparison,  replies  Chancellor  Harper?  and 
affirm,  that  with  us  there  have  been  fewer  murders  of  slaves,  than  of  paivnts,  chil- 
dren, apprentices,  in  societies  where  slavery  does  not  exist.  It  is  pretended  that 
nations  owning  slaves  are  feeble  in  a  military  capacity,  let  us  recur  to  the  histories 
of  Greece  and  Rome  for  the  answer.  We  are  supposed  to  be  exposed  to  internal 
dangers — to  the  risk  of  insurrection  and  violence  to  person  and  property.  Compare 
the  condition  of  the  Southern  with  that  of  the  Northern  States,  or  Great  Briiain — with 
the  riots  of  Massachusetts,  where  helpless  women  were  burnt  out  of  their  convent 
home  at  midnight — the  ruthless  violence  of  a  like  nature  in  Philadi  Iphia — the  anti-rent 
disturbances  in  New  York,  where  law  and  order  have  been  trampled  under  fool  fir 
two  years,  and  the  Governor  and  the  judges  talk  mincmgly  of  the  hardships  oi  the 

*  Harper's  Memoir.  t  Harper.  1  Hammond. 

9 


• 


18  Slavery  m  the  South. 

anti-renters,  who  are  obliged — poor  innocents — to  live  on  leased  land,  and  not  on  fee 
simple  estaiws,  contrary  to  the  geniu.s  of  our  institutions — or  the  infamous  Mormon 
nnd  anti  Mormon  troubles,  burnings,  and  murders  which  disgrace  Illinois — or  the 

disorders  of  Ireland,  where  one  man  at  the  head  of  the  populace  virtually  governs, 
conflagrations  and  murders  are  perpetrated  with  impunity  throughout  the  land,  and 
government  looks  helplessly  and  hopelessly  on — compare  all  this  with  th«  unbroken 
quiet  of  the  Southern  States.  It  is  asserted  that  the  slave  is  the  object  of  oppression 
and  tyranny.  If  a  laborer  in  England  steals  a  lamb,  or  entraps  the  game  kept  for 
the  sport  of  his  employers,  he  is  imprisoned,  or  transported;  if  a  slave  with  us  robs 
his  master  of  a  sheep,  he  is  punished  with  a  few  lashes;  if  he  kills  his  game,  he  has 

an  unlimited  privilege  to  eat  it.  But  the  slave  is  whipped — subject  to  a  degrading 
punishment.  So  also  are  the  sailors  and  soldiers  of  England.  Are  they  less  sensi- 
tive than  the  slave?  Is  the  lash  aifyniiiistered  with  a  gentler  temper,  or  a  weaker  arm 
in  the  navy,  or  army?  Shall  the  tar  be  brought  to  the  gangway  and  the  cat  for  his 
offences,  and  the  slave  go  free?  Is  the  boy,  or  apprentice,  degraded  in  England  by 
a  whipping  from  his  master?  It  is  very  idle  to  dispute  abou*  mere  modes  of  punish- 
ment.  AU  are  evils — unavoidable  evils.  Each  nation  selects  that  which  is  deemed 
most  conducive  to  the  end  in  view.  Between  whipping,  imprisonment,  transporta- 
tion, who  can  authoritative!)  decide?  As  to  the  severity  with  which  the  lash  is 
applied,  it  may  confidently  be  asserted  that  nothing,  to  which  the  slave  is  exposed,  is 
at  all  comparable  to  the  merciless  inflictions  to  which  English  sailors  and  soldiers 
have  been  frequently  condemnedt 

We  have  remarked  that  in  his  social,  moral,  and  religious  condition,  the  African 
is  immeasurably  improved  since  his  transfer  to  America  from  his  own  country,  and 
this  is  the  true  point  of  comparison.  From  an  idolater,  according  to  the  most  brutal 
forms  of  the  most  stupid  of  all  superstition,  he  has  been  converted  into  a  worshipper 
of  the  true  God.  From  an  ignorant  and  idle  barbarian,  he  has  been  changed  into  an 
industrious,  orderly,  quiet,  and  useful  laborer.  Have  the  philanthropists,  false  or 
true,  done  half  as  much  for  the  African?  Have  they  done  any  thing  for  him,  but  to 
make  him  discontented  with  a  condition  which  is  the  best  he  ever  knew — the  only 
one  in  which  he  can  ever  improve — that  of  subjection  to  a  superior  and  more  intelli- 
gent race.  Whether  the  system  of  education,  which  the  African  enjoys  among  us, 
may  not  be  modified  and  made  better;  whether  it  may  not  be  divested  of  some  remains 
of  colonial  rudeness,  is  a  question  for  those  only  to  decide,  to  whose  government 
Providence  has  entrusted  him;  but  this  is  certain,  it  is  the  best  which  the  negro  race 
has  ever  yet  been  permitted  to  enjoy. 

In  considering  slavery  as  a  question  of  political  economy,  we  have  so  far  regarded  it, 
as  it  influences  the  well  being  of  the  slave  only.  We  have  not  adverted  to  some  of 
the  consequences  of  the  system  of  free  labor  on  the  situation  of  the  employer  or  en  pi- 
talist.  It  has  been  said  that  the  manumission  of  the  slave  in  Europe  was  a  concession 
to  the  lord,  and  not  to  the  serf;  that  it  relieved  the  master  from  the  support  of  the 
slave,  when  the  work  of  the  last  was  no  longer  profitable.  In  other  words;  it  was 
perceived  by  the  dominant  class,  that  free  labor  was  cheaper  than  slave  labor,  and 
therefore  the  slave  was  made  free.  But  to  this  gain  on  the  part  of  the. master,  time 
hns  gradually  attached  certain  counter-balancing  evils,  which  may  make  it  do'ubtful 
whether  he  has  really  reaped  any  material  advantage  from  the  change.  A  pauper 
class  is  the  necessary  consequence  of  a  free  labor  class,  and  the  poor  soon  become 
numerous  and  destitute.  It  is  not  quite  possible  in  a  Christian  country  to  see  men 
starve  in  the  streets  of  a  great  city,  as  in  London  for  example,  without  some  effort  to 
aid  them.  But  this  must  happen  to  the  free  laborer  who  has  no  work,  and  therefore 
no  bread,  if  some  provision  is  not  made  for  his  support.  A  poor  tax  must  be  levied 
work-houses  must  be  built,  and  the  expenses  of  managing  them  must  be  paid! 
Enormous  sums  of  money  are  thus  forced  from  the  reluctant  master.  The  number 
of  paupers  in  Great  Britain,  by  the  census  of  1S41 ,  was  3,522,000,  to  ay  nothing  Of 
the  partially  destitute.  The  paupers  of  Ireland  alone,  according  to  Mr.  O'Connell, 
are  now  4,000,000.  The  poor  tax  of  1839  was  £4,400,000 — a  sum  nearly  equal  to 
the  whole  revenue  of  the  United  State*. 

There  is  no  part  of  the  system  of  English  society,  about  which  their  statesmen  and 


Slavery  in  tfie  South.  19 

writers  have  so  differed  and  disputed,  as  their  poor  laws.  It  is  difficult  to  say  whether 
they  are  most  hateful  to  the  tax  paying  landholder,  or  the  rims-supported  pauper; 
whether  the  rate-receiver,  or  the  poor-house  commissioner,  be  the  iSiost  detested  ob- 
ject; whether  the  beadle,  or  charity  boy — Mr.  Bumble,  or  Oliver  Twist — be  the 
happiest  illustration  of  the  blessings  of  the  system. 

It  would  seem  then,  that  the  great  proprietors  and  capitalist  have  not  altogether 
escaped  the  burthen  of  supporting  the  old,  the  sick,  and  the  infirm  laborer — that 
however  reluctant,  they  are  still  compelled  to  contribute  to  this  purpose.  They  doso 
in  a  way  more  onerous  to  themselves,  and  less  acceptable  to  the  laboring  puur.  It 
may  be  well  doubted  whether,  if  the  poor-law's  and  poor-rates  had  been  foreseen, 
the  landholders  of  England  would  have  been  so  ready  to  exchange  the  dear  labor  of 
the  serf,  for  the  cheap  labor  of  the  fieeman. 

When  to  this  continued  and  increasing  evil  is  added  the  danger  to  which  property 
is  exposed  from  the  despair  of  the  starving  laborer,  it  is  very  questionable,  whether 
the  European  master  has  improved  his  own  condition  by  the  manumission  of  the  8erf. 
It  has  been  shown  that  to  the  serf  himself,  the  change  has  been  no  sure  blessing.  As 
a  general  question  then,  of  political  economy,  or  civil  government,  it  is  by  no  means 
certain  whether  slavery,  or  free  labor,  be  the  most  useful  element  in  civil  society. 

Such  is  the  view  sketched  concisely  and  imperfectly  from  the  writings  at  the  head 
of  our  article,  of  slavery  as  one  of  the  conditions  of  civilized  society — one  of  the 
classes,  or  castes,  into  which  the  population  of  a  great  nation  must  be  necessarily 
distributed.  You  may  call  the  mass  of  poor  laborers  what  you  will,  but  destitution, 
and  suffering,  and  hard  labor  will  be  the  attendants  on  poverty.  There  are  some 
evils  accompanying  the  condition  of  the  free  laborer,  there  are  others  peculiar  to  that 
of  the  slave;  which  may  predominate,  as  a  general  question  it  is  not  easy  to  decide. 
But  whatever  may  be  the  truth  in  reference  to  the  laborers  of  other  countries,  where 
ihr-re  is  no  broad  or  marked  line  of  discrimination  between  the  rich  and  the  poor, 
except  what  wealth  or  want  may  create,  a  new  element  enters  into  the  calculation  of 
advantages  and  evils  incident  to  the  several  conditions  of  slavery,  or  free  labor,  when 
the  question  refers,  as  it  does  with  us,  to  two  distinct,  heterogeneous  races,  who  can 
never  unite.  If  the  two  races  so  brought  together  are  whites  an  blacks,  the  while 
will  not.  endure  the  union — the  happiness  of  the  African  is  best  secured  in  bondage 
under  the  superior  race.  It  is  in  this  condition  only,  that  he  can  enjoy  or  partake 
the  advantages  of  a  high  state  of  civilization. 

The  negro  never  originated  a  civilization  of  his  own.  In  Africa  he  is  found  always 
and  every  where,  in  a  state  of  the  rudest  barbarism.  In  our  own  da)  the  folly  of 
France  has  enabled  him  to  prove,  that  after  having  been  trained  to  a  high  degree  of 
efficient  industry  and  improvement,  he  relapses,  when  left  to  himself,  into  hopeless 
savageism;  and  England  is  trying  a  series  of  experiments,  to  enable  him  to  establish 
the  same  truth  in  her  West  India  Islands.  Jf  then  he  is  ever  to  enjoy  the  advautsg.* 
physical,  moral,  and  religious,  of  a  highly  civilized  society,  it  must  be  in  permanent 
connection  with  a  race  superior  to  his  own. 

But  with  such  a  race  he  cannot  hope  to  live  as  an  equal.  He  never  did  from  the 
beginning  of  the  world.  He  never  can.  The  nonsense  of  tho  abolitionists  about 
amalgamation  is  as  stupid  as  it  is  nauseous.  It  violates  the  common  instincts  of  our 
nature.  Mr.Tappnn  himself  would  shun  a  negro  son-in-law,  and  Mr.  Alvan  -Su-wart 
avoid  the  odo  rs  of  an  African  spouse.  The  most  careless  observer  of  events  will  be 
continually  struck  at  the  difficulty  with  which  different  tribes,  or  nations,  mix  and 
combine,  even  when  they  approach  to  physical  and  intellectual  equality.  In  England 
they  still  talk  of  the  Norman,  and  Saxon,  and  Celt.  But  where  one  race  is  decidedly 
an  inferior  one,  greatly  an  inferior  one — a  race  of  slaves  in  all  ages — never  reach- 
ing to  a  high  condition  of  moral,  or  intellectual  culture;  always  ignorant,  always 
savage;  in  the  eye  of  the  white,  disgusting  fron%co'or  and  features;  to  talk  of  a  mix- 
ture, is  to  exhibit  an  ignorance  of  our  nature,  worse  than  that  of  the  moat  arrant 
clodhopper,  who  selects  his  sheep  and  his  swine  from  superior  breeds  The  stupidity, 
indeed,  of  the  ranters  foabolit  ion  ,  is  one  of  the  aggravating  points  of  the  annoyance 
to  which  they  subject  us.  It  would  be  an  almost  ludicrous  death  to  be  bray**d  o«t  9$ 
existence  by  a  chorus  of  donkies* 


22  Slavery  in  thg  South. 

equality.  The  consequences  of  manumission  to  the  blacks,  in  driving  them  from  em- 
ployment,  and  rapidly  lessening  their  number,  are  so  obvious  as  to  arrest  the  attention 
of  the  transient  observer.  "The  colored  population  (says  Mr.  Ly^li*)  are  protected 
against  the  free  competition  of  the  white  emigrants,  with  whom,  if  they  were  once 
liberated,  they  could  no  longer  successfully  contend."  "Experience  has  proved  in 
the  Northern  States,  that  emancipation  immediately  checks  the  increase  of  the  color- 
ed population,  and  causes  tne  relative  number  of  whites  to  augment  very  rapidly." 
"Before  the  influx  of  white  laborers,  the  coloured  race  will  give  way,  and  it  will  re- 
quire the  watchful  care  of  the  philanthropist,  whether  in  the  North  or  South,  to  pre- 
vent them  from  being  thrown  out  of  employment,  and  reduced  to  destitution."  A 
moments  reflection  however  would  convince  Mr.  Lyell,  that  no  effort  of  philanthropy 
could  overcome  the  influence  of  those  causes — the  leges  legum  of  which,  civil  institu- 
tions are  themselves  the  n.ere  effects — by  which  the  fate  of  the  African  race  would  be 
decided.  We  might  deplore  that  fate,  we  could  not  ch  inge  it.  Mas  philanthropy 
changed  or  even  retarded  that  of  the  Indian  tribes  of  North  America? 

But  the  disadvantage  resulting  to  the  manumitted  black,  from  his  marked  inferiori- 
ty, and  inabilty  to  engage  in  competition  with  the  white  man  in  the  ordinary  pursuits 
of  life,  is  a  small  evil,  compared  with  the  infinitely  greater  one  whic!1  would  perpetu- 
ally threaten  him,  of  actual  collision  between  the  two  colours.  Various  causes  might 
lead  to  this — the  depredation  of  the  starving  negro — the  ambition  of  aspiring  men  of 
his  own  race,  or  unprincipled  and  reckless  demagogues  of  the  other, — hatred  for  sup- 
posed wrongs, — the  discontent  arisirg  from  real  inferiority.  If  from  these,  or  any 
other  causes,  a  resort  to  arms  between  the  two  races  should  occur,  then  the  sure  and 
speedy  destrnction  of  the  unhappy  African  must  be  the  consequence.  The  abolition, 
ists,  with  their  characteristic  stupidity  and  malignity,  seern  desirous  to  hasten  the 
conflict,  as  they  profess  to  augur  victory  to  the  object  of  their  sympathy;  but  no  man 
capable  of  thinking  would  for  a  moment  be  in  doubt  as  to  the  result. 

At  the  settlement  of  this  country,  according  to  Catlin's  calculation,  there  were 
6,000,000  of  red  men  scattered  over  the  Continent.  There  are  now  1,400,000. 
They  have  disappeared  before  the  indomitable  race  of  Caucassian  origin.  But  if  the 
red  men  of  North  America,  numerous  as  they  were — brave,  persevering,  resolute  of 
purpose,  and  trained  to  the  art  of  war,  were  unable  to  resist  the  steady,  determined 
onset  of  the  few,  feeble,  scattered  colonies,  spread  out  along  a  thousand  miles  of 
coast,  what  hope  could  there  h^g  for  the  sluggish,  timid,  unskilled  African,  in  a  con- 
etst  with  these  colonists — numerous,  bold,  energetic,  and  practised  in  arms,  and 
stimulated  to  fierce  indignation,  by  the  circumstances  of  the  conflict,  and  the  nature 
of  the  foe?  It  would  be  a  war  of  extermination  to  the  black.  Such  is  the  conclu- 
sion of  Lord  Brougham. 

In  illustrating  the  peculiarly  amiable  character  of  our  English  friend,  and  the  amu- 
sing blunders  into  which  his  love  of  himself,  and  his  hatred  for  his  neighbors,  some- 
times  lead  him,  we  omitted  the  most  ludicrous  example  which  has  met  our  notice. 
Lord  Sydenham,  when  Governoi -general  of  Canada,  wrote  a  series  of  letters  to  his 
colleagues  at  home.  The  letteis  are  libels  on  the  Americans,  after  the  approved 
English  model.  They  are  so  del igh  fully  abusive,  that  it  never  seems  to  have  oc- 
curred to  his  friends,  that  they  were  also  very  silly.  They  have  accordingly  been 
published,  and  are  religiously  believed  in  by  nine  out  of  ten  among  their  readers  in 
England.  We  will  give  only  one  of  the  many  pleasant  pdssages  which  abound  in  the 
Sydenham  correspondence,  and  which  happens  to  be  connected  with  our  subject. 
The  Americans,  says  this  nobleman,  are  "such  a  set  of  braggadocios,  that  their 
public  men  must  submit  to  the  claims  of  their  extravagant  vanity."  Then  in  another 
place,  he  says,  "if  they  drive  us  into  a  war,  the  blacks  in  the  South  will  soon  settle  all 
that  part  of  the  Union;  and  in  the  North,  I  feel  sure  we  can  lick  them  to  their  heart's 
content." — a  pleasant  specimen  this  of  the  genuine  John  Bull — of  what  N.  G.  Willis 
calls  the  perfect  thoroughbred.  He  is  abusing  ihe  Americans  tor  braggadocios,  and 
their  public  men  for  submitting  to  the  vanity  of  the  people,  and  in  the  next  sentence 
exhibits  a  sample  of  the  most  farcical  blusier,  and  convinces  us  that  he  himself  had 

*  Travels  in  North  America. 


Slavery  in  the  South.  23 

been  filled  so  brim-full  of  the  silliest  Canadian  vanities,  as  to  believe  that  the  blue 


noses 


could  lick  the :  Northern,  and  the  blacks  settle  the  Southern  States— the  settling 
on  which  the  «miHble  Governor-general  relies  with  so  much  complacency,  being  of 
cuurscj,  something  like  that  of  St.  Domingo.  This  licking  and  settling  ,s  almost  as 
ridiculous  as  Aivan  Stewart  s  habeas  corpus  case  in  Utica,  when  Mr.  Mum.'s  old  ne- 


gro woman  was  frightened  almost  to  death  at  the  prospect  of  being  made  4tee  labor- 
er—  or  the  similar  affair  of  Dr.  Hudson  at  Northampton,  where  the  habels-corpused 
slave  brought  an  action  for  false  imprisonment  against  the  poor  philanthn  pist—  oc  Mr. 
Hoar  s  solemn  question  to  the  Massachusetts  Legislature,  in  his  account  of  the  mission 
to  the  South,  when  he  gravely  asks  whether  the  States  are  all  conquered  provinces  of 
South  Carolina—  or  Mr.  Clarkson's  playing  the  part  of  Gregory  the  VII.;  issuing  his 
bulls  to  the  good  people  of  the  United  States,  and  denouncing  the  errors  of  omission 
and  commission  perpeirated  by  the  framers  of  the  Federal  Constitution—  or  Col. 
MilchePs  late  work,  which  proves  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  English  public  that  Na- 
poleon was  a  dolt  and  a  coward 

We  had  no  intention,  however  to  dwell  on  Lord  Sydenham's  nonsense,  but  adver. 
ted  to  the  passage  merely  for  the  purpose  of  introducing  the  remarks  upon  it  of  a 
much  abler  and  more  distinguished  man.  "Lord  Sydenham,  says  the  celebrated  ex- 
Chancellor,  is  thoughtless  enough  to  view  with  a  kind  of  exultation  the  prospect  of  a 
negro  insurrection,  as  a  consequence  of  the  United  States  daring  to  wage  war  with 
England.  Misguided,  short  sighted  man!  and  ignorant,  oh,  profoundly  ignorant  of  the 
things  that  belong  to  the  peace  and  the  happiness  of  either  color  in  the  new  world!  A 
negro  revolt  in  our  islands,  where  the  whites  are  a  handful  among  their  sable  brethren, 
might  prove  fatal  to  European  life,  but  the  African,  at  least,  would  be  secure  as  far  as 
security  would  be  derived  from  the  successful  shed  ling  of  blood.  But  on  the  continent. 
where  the  numbers  of  the  two  colors  are  evenly  balanced,*  and  all  the  arms  are  in  the 
white  man's  hands,  who  but  the  bitterest  enemy  of  the  unhappy  slaves  could  bear  to  con- 
template  their  wretchedness  in  the  attempt  by  violence  to  shake  of  their  chains."  Yet 
this  is  the  wretchedness  which  the  pretended  friends  of  the  negro  in  England  and 
in  America,  not  only  bear  to  contemplate,  but  greedily  seek  to  bring  about  —  let  it 
come  exclaims  the  Senator  of  Quincy  in  the  ecstacy  of  anticipated  enjoyment—  let  it 
come  repeats  the  philanthropist  of  Utica,  who  entertains  his  guests  on  alternate  courses 
of  free-labor  sugars')-  arid  abolition  prints,  and  discusses,  with  the  same  coolness,  an 
ice  cream,  and  the  cutting  of  Southern  throats.±  But  we  of  the  South  regard  the 
catastrophe  deprecated  by  Lord  Bougham  with  horror,  and  believing  it  to  be  the  cer- 
tain consequence  of  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  United  States,  we  say  to  the  aboli- 
tionists, for  the  sake  of  the  negro,  cease  from  your  machinations  —  setting  aside  every 
other  argument  and  reason  against  your  projects,  this  single  one  is  conclusive  —  there 
is  but  one  alternative  for  the  African  in  America  —  he  must  live  a  slave,  or  from  causes 
which  no  human  power  or  influence  can  control,  he  must  cease  to  live  at  all. 

Our  objections,  therefore,  to  the  manumission  of  the  blacks,  may  be  stated  like 
those  of  Mr.  Grosvenor,  to  the  abolition  of  the  slave  trade.  One  of  them  is,  that  it 
would  destroy  the  negroes;  it  is  unnecessary  to  give  any  more. 

To  one  then  who  is  content  to  view  the  affairs  of  human  life  in  their  chequered  and 
sad  reality,  and  is  not  deluded  by  visions  of  imaginary  equality  and  happiness  never 
yet  enjoyed  among  men,  the  condition  of  slivery,  as  one  of  the  permanently  estab- 
lished conditions  of  society,  presents  no  such  hideous  features  as  are  conjured  up  in 

*  Lord  Brougham  does  not  state  the  case  with  all  its  strength.  In  the  slave  States  the  number 
of  whites  to  blacks  is  as  five  to  three. 

t  Nothing  can  be  more  inconsistent  with  their  professed  good  will  to  the  neg?o,  than  the  refusal 
of  the  abolitionists  to  consume  slave-grown  Sugar,  for  although  the  negro  is  always  sure  of  food, 
clothing,  etc.,  his  enjoyments  are  materially  promoted  by  the  prosperous  condition  of  the  master. 
The  condition  of  slave  and  master  is  indeed  the  only  one  securing  an  intimate  union  between  the 
interest  of  labor  and  capital.  In  England  the  object  is  manifest  —  to  give  a  monpply  of  the  sugar 
market  to  her  own  colonies.  In  America,  our  abolition  party,  in  their  blind  imitati^  "r  TIaeter 


hall,  have  taken  a  position  precisely  the  reverse  of  that  of  EnH«nH  -the  American  party  discourage 
their  own  country's  production,  for  the  benefit  of  foreigners. 

t  This  gentlemen  on  his  supper  tables,  displays,  among  thw  diahes,  pictures  of  imaginary  doing* 
of  masters  and  slaves,  with  whips,  chains,  handcuffs,  etc.,  to  improve  the  appetite  of  hi*  guettt. 


24  Slavery  in  the  South. 

the  fancies  of  real  and  pretended  philanthropists.  It  is  the  position  in  which  it  has 
pleased  Divine  Providence  to  place  the  poor  and  the  feeble  in  all  ages,  and  almost  all 
countries,  which  he  has  recognized  and  established  as  a  form  of  social  life,  and,  for 
the  regulation  of  which,  he  has  prescribed  rules  that,  if  duly  regarded,  secure  to  the 
slave  all  jhe  benefits  physical,  moral,  and  religious,  which  the  laboring  poor  can  ever 
hope  to./tij-irnand. 

When  compared  with  free  labor,  it  will  be  found  that  each  condition  has  its  bene- 
fits  ;tud  its  evils  to  the  whole  community — to  the  destitute  and  to  the  rich,  the  laborer 
and  the  lord;  that  whatever  may  be  true  as  to  the  superior  advantages  of  free  over 
slave  labor  in  other  countries,  where  no  radical  difficulty  prevents  the  manumitted 
serf  from  melting  into  the  mass  of  the  dominant  people,  there  is  no  choice  left  us  in 
America  where  the  slave  is  an  inferior  race,  of  different  color,  with  whom  the 
master  will  never  unite;  that  the  cultivation  of  the  South  requires  the  preservation  of 
the  only  species  of  labor  which  she  is  able  to  command,  and,  without  which,  our 
fields  would  be  abandoned;  that  to  the  slave  himself,  his  present  condition  is  not  only 
the  best,  as  securing  to  him  advantages,  comforts,  enjoyments,  which  the  African 
never  before  possessed,  but  it  is  his  only  security  from  the  operation  of  circumstances, 
which  would  either  gradually  wear  away  his  kind,  or  suddenly  extinguish  it  in  blood. 

These  are  the  conclusions  to  which  our  argument  conducts  us,  and  we  leave  it 
with  every  well  meaning  man  to  determine,  how  he  can  with  a  clear  conscience,  lend 
his  aid,  to  an  agitation  which  seeks  to  bring  about  by  violence  a  catastrophe  so  dis- 
astrous to  society,  so  injurious  to  the  master,  so  destructive  to  the  slave?  Can  he — 
dare  he  meddle  with  a  question,  with  which  he  has  no  immediate  concern,  against  the 
protests  of  those  most  interested,  and  with  the  almost  certainty  that  his  interference 
will  produce  incalculable  evil  to  the  object  of  his  care.  W.  G. 


HJCER  &  BURKE,  PRINTERS,  3  B»OAD-*T. 


